Checkmate
by Delordra
Summary: The Bristow family gains a new member and takes on Rambaldi. Title changed from Enter Stage Right.
1. Captured!

Enter Stage Right  
  
Note: The story begins about three weeks after the Season 3 premiere, "The Two". It's now updated through "Succession". I'll keep editing the story to reflect new episodes as they're shown, until they start contradicting my story (which is part of what's so fun about fanfic!)  
  
Chapter 1: Captured!  
  
Damn, damn, damn, Sydney Bristow thought to herself as she climbed into the van, always mindful of the gun pointing into the small of her back. She didn't think she'd ever been on a mission that had gone more wrong. It was supposed to be simple: get in, download some files from the Covenant-affiliated facility's computers, and get out. But now she knew at least three members of their six-person team were dead. She didn't know what had happened to Weiss and his partner, Agent Jacobs, and she had been captured. She couldn't help but wonder if she was about to lose another two years of her life-or maybe all of it this time.  
  
In the van, she was forced to kneel facing the wall. As the van began to move, her hands were roughly tied behind her back, her feet were tied together, and then she was blindfolded and a wad of cloth was stuffed into her mouth. As if all that weren't enough, she felt a prick in her upper arm and knew that she had been drugged. It was the worst kind of drug, too; she didn't lose consciousness completely, but she did lose all control of her body and the ability to think clearly. She fell to the side as she lost her ability to hold herself up, landing with a painful thump on the floor of the van. She heard laughter from her captors at that, and then all sounds faded into a low background murmur as her thoughts became muddled.  
  
She had no idea how much time passed while she remained in a drugged stupor. She was aware of being moved several times and then left lying down for a while. After the last move, though, her captors placed her on a chair and tied her to it, letting her head hang forward on her chest. After they left, the room became silent, and eventually Sydney lost consciousness completely.  
  
When she woke, she found that the drug had worn off and that she could think clearly. She raised her head to find her neck stiff and painful from its awkward position. She was still blindfolded and gagged. She knew there was probably someone watching her, but she struggled with her bonds anyway. It was no use; they were all tight.  
  
It wasn't long before she heard footsteps. Her blindfold was removed, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the room's bright light. She forced them open after a moment and was able to make out two people in the room before she had to close them again.  
  
"Find out who she is and what the CIA was doing in our facility," a man's voice said. He spoke English, but with a moderate Russian accent. Sydney forced her eyes open once more, only to watch his back as he exited the room. She then turned her eyes to look at the room's other occupant, who turned out to be a woman who looked like she was in her early twenties. The first thing Sydney noticed was how much the other woman resembled Sydney's own father. Brown eyes, short brown hair, fair skin, average height-other than the resemblance, she was fairly unremarkable. Beside her was a table with what looked like a lot of sharp instruments. The well-trained, analytical part of Sydney's mind noticed all these things even while she was on the verge of panic. Just keep your mouth shut, she thought over and over again.  
  
"Well, this should be fun," the woman said in a low-pitched, unaccented voice. She picked up a long, sharp-looking knife and moved toward Sydney. "Let's just find out who you are, shall we?"  
  
Next: Does Sydney die? Of course not! Find out how she escapes... 


	2. Strange Behavior

Chapter 2: Strange Behavior  
  
"I'm really not a big fan of torture," the young woman said, "so it would really be easier if you would just answer my questions. What's your name?" Sydney was still gagged; she couldn't answer even if she had wanted to. What was going on? "All right, we'll do this the hard way," the woman said.  
  
Sydney closed her eyes as the young woman approached, waiting for the blow...and then she felt the knife slice through the ropes holding her hands together. She opened her eyes and looked at the other woman in shock. The woman held a finger to her lips, then began severing the rest of the ropes holding Sydney to the chair. Once free, Sydney began to move slowly, numb from being in one position for so long. Her arms were useless, but she thought she could probably walk.  
  
Suddenly the young woman let out a scream of agony, making Sydney jump. Then she said, "Why don't you just think for a little while about whether silence is really worth it. I think that knife in your gut might change your mind soon," while helping Sydney out of the chair and toward the door. "I'll be back in a little while." They left the room, and the girl slammed the door behind them. "Hurry," she whispered.  
  
Still not knowing what was going on, Sydney followed her down the hall and onto a fire escape. They went up to the roof and walked across a plank to what was apparently another building. They stepped onto the other roof just in time; Sydney turned back to see the building they had just left suddenly implode.  
  
The woman sat down, pulling Sydney with her. "They'll be watching just in case I got out," she whispered. "You can take off the gag now, but I wouldn't recommend making much noise unless you want Kresniev to interrogate you himself."  
  
Sydney wasted no time in removing the gag. "How...why..."  
  
"Kresniev-that's the leader of my division of the Covenant, you saw him earlier-has been trying to kill me for a couple of years now," the girl said softly. "I knew when he left me alone to interrogate you that he was going to try again tonight; he normally likes to have at least two people on an interrogation.  
  
"But he would have killed me before he got any information," Sydney whispered.  
  
"He already knows who you work for. That's all he really needs to know."  
  
"So why did you bother saving me?"  
  
The girl shrugged. "Just another way to spite Kresniev. You all right? Ready to get going?"  
  
Sydney nodded. "I'm Agent Bristow, by the way," she said.  
  
"Call me Kate," the girl answered as they moved away from the imploded building.  
  
"Have you ever seen me before?"  
  
Kate stopped and looked at her, then shrugged. "Don't think so."  
  
Sydney took a deep breath. Protocol said that she shouldn't say anything to this enemy agent, but then, the woman had just saved her life for no apparent reason. Besides, Sydney's instincts were saying to trust her. "I don't remember the past two years, but the Covenant had something to do with it."  
  
They had made their way to a parking garage by now, and Kate unlocked the doors of a car that seemed to be waiting for her. She opened the driver's door, then looked at Sydney. "I wouldn't be surprised if the Covenant was responsible," she said, "but I'm afraid I don't know anything about what happened to you."  
  
Sydney sighed inwardly. "Well, thanks anyway," she said.  
  
"I can, however, drive you to the airport, if that's all right," Kate said. Sydney nodded. They got into the car and Kate started to drive.  
  
"Do you have someplace to go? You could come to Los Angeles with me, the CIA would help you out..." Sydney said after a few minutes.  
  
Kate waved her hand in denial. "I've got things set up. It's better not to reappear anywhere just yet."  
  
  
  
"Where are we?" Sydney asked as Kate got onto a highway, realizing that they weren't in Madrid where the mission had taken place.  
  
"Munich," Kate answered. "You can get home okay from the airport, right?"   
  
Sydney nodded. A few minutes later they pulled up to the international terminal at the airport. "Thanks for saving my life," Sydney said, still confused by the events of the last few hours.  
  
Kate smiled. As Sydney got out of the car, she said, "You'll be seeing me again soon." She then pulled away, leaving Sydney on the curb contemplating her words.  
  
Next: Sydney does, indeed, see Kate again soon. 


	3. Turncoat

Chapter 3: Turncoat  
  
Two months later...  
  
Marcus Dixon entered his office one Monday morning to find a woman he had never seen before sitting calmly in front of his desk. "Who the hell are you?" he said, reaching for the button by the door that would call Security.  
  
"You might want to listen to what I have to say first," she said, turning toward him.   
  
He was surprised at how young she appeared-he would guess that she was about twenty-one. Long, curly honey-blond hair, blue eyes, and a rather seductive alto voice that immediately brought to mind Irina Derevko. "Talk fast," he said.  
  
"I used to work for the Covenant. I want to help you bring it down."  
  
"How did you get in here?"  
  
"I was an intelligence officer until my apparent death two months ago. One of my assignments was to find out how to get into your facility undetected. I told my superiors that I was unsuccessful, but, as you can see, that was a lie."  
  
Dixon walked to his desk, which not incidentally contained a revolver, and sat down. He didn't think that his visitor was likely to hurt him, since she had revealed herself to him, but he'd feel better with a weapon. "I don't suppose you have any proof of what you're saying."  
  
The young woman opened her purse, withdrew a computer disk, and handed it to Dixon. "Those are blueprints of some of the Covenant's strongholds, along with names and pictures of all the agents in my division."  
  
Dixon was thinking that this was far too good to be true. "Why are you doing this?"  
  
"The leader of my division is a man named Nicolai Kresniev. He killed my family. Twice. I've hated him for eighteen years." Dixon didn't say anything, waiting for her to elaborate. "When I was four, the KGB decided that I had abilities that would make me a good agent. Kresniev came to my home and said he was taking me away so that I could serve Russia. My grandparents asked if he could wait a week, because my mother was coming to visit then. He killed them in front of me for their 'disloyalty'.  
  
"I was nine when the Soviet Union fell. I was in training with about thirty other children my age. Kresniev got orders to kill us all, but he decided he'd rather have his own private little spy corps, so he took four of us with him and killed the rest. I'm the only one of those four still alive; he killed the others, making it look like he wasn't involved, and he tried to kill me. I don't know why he decided to get rid of us; maybe he realized that we were all obeying him out of fear rather than loyalty, I don't know."  
  
Dixon sat back and thought for a moment. If she was lying, she was doing a damn good job, he thought. "Other than the files you gave me, do you have any proof of what you're saying?"  
  
"I met one of your agents a couple of months ago who can identify me. Agent Bristow."  
  
"Which Agent Bristow?"  
  
The woman raised her eyebrows. "There are two? I didn't catch her first name..."  
  
The "her" was enough for Dixon. He pressed his intercom button. "Have Sydney Bristow come to my office, please," he told his secretary.  
  
They sat in silence for a moment, until Sydney came in. The woman turned to look at Sydney, who studied her for a moment. Then she said, "Kate?"  
  
Kate smiled. "I wasn't sure you'd recognize me."  
  
"You look completely different," Sydney said. She turned to Dixon. "She's the one who saved my life in Munich."  
  
Dixon nodded. He decided that, for now, he would accept Kate's story. "Thank you, Sydney," he said. "Kate will be joining us in the near future. Remember our conversation after the Madrid mission?" Sydney nodded. "Good. Pretend you've never seen her before. You can go."  
  
As soon as she was gone, Dixon turned to Kate. "I have reason to believe that a spy from the Covenant has infiltrated the CIA." He'd begun to suspect that some time ago, in fact, and was nearly certain after what had happened in Madrid; nearly every mission involving the Covenant had been an unqualified disaster. "Do you know of anyone?"  
  
"I might recognize them if I saw them," Kate said. "There are a lot of agents spying on other organizations that I've seen, but don't know anything about. I don't know specifically if there's an agent assigned to the CIA, but if I see someone I recognize, I'll let you know."  
  
"Good," Dixon said. "I'll set you up as a new agent fresh out of training. Do you have a safe I.D.?"  
  
Kate nodded. "Katharine Brown. US citizen with birth certificate, social security number, passport, Virginia driver's license, and credit card. No one in the Covenant knows about it."  
  
"Perfect. Do you have your passport on you? I'll need to borrow it for a few days to get things set up." Kate handed him a US passport. He glanced at it; it looked perfect. He'd have to get it tested to find out how she'd managed such a perfect forgery...  
  
"It's real," Kate said, "not a forgery. The birth certificate is a forgery, everything else followed from that."  
  
Dixon nodded. He knew that it was fairly easy in the United States to develop a fake identity that would pass every test. He pulled a card from his desk and handed it to Kate. "Stay at that hotel; give them the card, they'll know to have the CIA take care of the bill. Use Katharine Brown as your name. I'll call your room in a couple of days when I've got things set up."  
  
Kate nodded, stood, and extended her hand. "Thank you for your help, Agent Dixon. I look forward to working with you."  
  
As they shook hands and he watched her leave, Dixon couldn't help thinking that it was all too perfect. He wasn't quite prepared to fully trust her yet, of course; as soon as she was out of sight he picked up the phone and made arrangements for her to be under constant surveillance.  
  
Next: Sydney and Kate talk. Weiss gets a crush. 


	4. Introductions

Chapter 4: Introductions  
  
As Sydney walked to her desk on Wednesday morning, Dixon called her over. "Agent Bristow, this is Agent Brown. She's a new agent just out of training. Could you show her around?"  
  
"Of course," Sydney said. Dixon left, and Sydney looked at the young woman she was pretending not to know. The aura of confidence that had surrounded Kate in both of Sydney's previous encounters with her was missing, and there wasn't the slightest hint in her demeanor that she was anything other than someone just out of training. Sydney extended her hand. "Call me Sydney."  
  
Kate shook her hand. "Kate," she said.  
  
"So you just graduated from training?" Sydney asked.  
  
"Yeah, about a week ago. I just got here yesterday. I've never been to California before, so I'm a little intimidated."  
  
Sydney smiled. "You'll get used to it. Why don't I introduce you to some people? Hey, Marshall! This is Kate. She's new."  
  
"Oh, hi, um, hello, it's nice to meet you," Marshall stammered. "Hey, you look really young, how old are you?" Sydney suppressed a smile. One could always expect a social faux pas from Marshall.  
  
Kate just smiled and answered, "I just turned twenty-three. Everybody always says I look young for my age."  
  
"Yeah, you do," said Marshall. "I mean, you could be just, like, Sydney's kid sister that she's showing around. I mean, if she had a sister, because she doesn't..."  
  
"Thanks, Marshall," Sydney said, tugging on Kate's arm.  
  
"Nice to meet you," Kate said, following. As soon as they were out of earshot, she said, "Is he always that...um...bumbling?"  
  
Sydney grinned. "You will soon learn that Marshall is a very sweet man, but he has no social sense whatsoever." She steered Kate over to Vaughn and Weiss. "This is Kate Brown," she said. "She's new, straight out of training."  
  
Vaughn shook Kate's hand. "Michael Vaughn. Nice to meet you."  
  
"Hi, I'm Eric Weiss," Weiss said, shaking her hand as well. "Don't believe all the terrible stories Sydney will tell you about me."  
  
"Don't worry, I will," Kate said with a grin.  
  
"Hey, do you have a place to live yet?" Weiss asked. "Because there's an apartment open in my building." He saw that Sydney looked impatient and guessed that she wanted to finish the tour and introductions quickly. "Of course, Sydney could tell you all about that, since she lives there too."  
  
Kate smiled. "Thanks. It was nice to meet you both."  
  
They left, and Vaughn looked at Weiss. "Don't you think she's a little young for you?" he asked.  
  
"What? Where the heck did that come from?"  
  
"You were checking her out!"  
  
"Yeah, so? If she's through training she's got to be at least twenty-three; that's only a nine year age difference."  
  
Vaughn just shrugged and grinned. "Well, just don't act too lecherous, old man."  
  
Sydney and Kate had moved on to the conference rooms and the break room. Sydney spotted her father when she came out to the break room and pointed him out to Kate. "That's my dad, Jack Bristow," she said. "If somebody says Agent Bristow, it can get kind of confusing, so it's usually easier to use our first names." She turned and saw that Kate was standing there with her mouth open, her face white. "Kate? Are you okay?"  
  
"Is there somewhere we can talk in private?"  
  
Next: Prepare to be shocked! (Maybe.) 


	5. Revelations

Chapter 5: Revelations 

Sydney led Kate to the women's bathroom, made sure it was empty, and locked the door.  "What's wrong?"

Kate dug in her purse for a moment, then pulled out a worn photograph and passed it to Sydney.

Sydney stared at the picture in shock.  It was a wedding picture…of her own parents.  "How…what…where did you get this?" she stammered.

"Is that your mother in the picture?" Kate asked.  Sydney nodded.  Kate took a deep breath and said, "She's my mother too."

 "We're sisters," Sydney said softly after a moment.

"At least half sisters," Kate said.  She took the picture back from Sydney.  "I've never known for sure whether that's my father."

Sydney felt a half-hysterical laugh bubbling up, but suppressed it.  She had to make sure this was real, and not some sort of trick.  "When's your birthday?"

"June 2, 1982," Kate answered.  "I was born a month early, though."

"My mother left on October 26, 1981," Sydney replied.  They both quickly calculated and realized that their mother must have been about four weeks pregnant when she left.  Sydney slid down the wall to a seated position.  After a moment, Kate joined her.

"She was spying, wasn't she?  On your father?  I know she was a KGB agent" Kate said.

"Our father," Sydney corrected.  "And yes, she pretended to be his wife for ten years.  Up until a few years ago, I thought she had died in a car accident."

"How old were you?"

"Six."  They were silent a moment, and then Sydney said, "What about you?  How come she never told you who your father was?"

"I haven't seen her since I was four," Kate answered.  "She worked for the KGB when I was little; they'd send her on undercover assignments for weeks or months at a time, so I lived with her parents.  Then, when I was almost five, Kresniev came to our house and said that I was 'needed for the good of the Soviet Union'.  My grandparents asked him if he could wait a week because my mother was coming home for my birthday.  He said they were 'disloyal' and killed them.  Then he took me to Moscow and put me into training to be a spy.  I've been trying to get away ever since."

"Sounds like your life has been as crazy as mine," Sydney said.  She looked at Kate again.  "You know, I always wanted a sister."

"Me, too," Kate said with a small smile.  "Do you know anything about Mama?  All I know is she's on the CIA's most wanted list."

"Dad knows how to contact her.  We should tell him about this."

Kate nodded.  "And we should probably get out of here…someone might want to use the bathroom."

Sydney smiled.  "Absolutely."  They got up and left the bathroom together.

Next: Jack meets his other daughter.


	6. Spying

Chapter 6: Spying  
  
Once out of the bathroom, Sydney and Kate headed towards Jack Bristow, but Dixon stopped them. "Both of you, my office," he said. Having no other choice, the women followed him. Once they were all seated, he spoke. "I'll make this quick because we've got to move. We've just gotten intel that a former Covenant agent named Ivan Cosovich has gone freelance. He's stolen a disk from the Covenant containing information on their medical experiments."  
  
Sydney sucked in her breath. That meant that the disk might have information on what had happened during her missing two years...  
  
Dixon saw her expression and nodded at her. "Cosovich has apparently made arrangements to sell the disk to an unknown buyer tonight in Rio de Janeiro. Sydney, you speak Portuguese, right?"  
  
Sydney nodded, and Kate said, "So do I."  
  
"Good. We've got the location of the meeting, and there's a plane leaving in half an hour. Kate, have you met Cosovich?"  
  
"I've seen him once or twice, but we've never actually been introduced. He won't recognize me," Kate said confidently.  
  
"Fine. It will be you two, then; I don't want to take a chance of our 'leak' letting the Covenant know about this before you get there. You'd better get to the airport; clothing and equipment will be waiting for you when you arrive." They stood and left the office.   
  
As she exited, Kate almost ran into Jack Bristow. "Excuse me...um, hello, I don't think we've met before," Jack said.  
  
"Agent Bristow, this is Kate Brown. She's just out of training," Dixon said.  
  
"Oh. Nice to meet you, Agent Brown," Jack said.  
  
"Nice to meet you, Agent Bristow," Kate said. Unfortunately, there was no time to talk, so she and Sydney simply left.  
  
"I guess it will have to be tomorrow," Sydney said once they were out of the building. Kate nodded.  
  
Fourteen hours later, Sydney and Kate were in Rio and headed toward Cosovich's home, dressed in black sneaky suits and armed to the teeth. They split up to get into the study where the meeting would take place, with Sydney going around outside and Kate going through the house.  
  
Kate reached the study first, bursting in just as Cosovich handed the disk to his buyer. Damn, we're late, she thought as she took Cosovich down with a blow to the head before he even knew she was there. She turned and pointed her gun at the buyer, only to see a gun pointed back at her. Kate froze. The woman holding the gun in one hand and the disk in the other was someone Kate hadn't seen in almost twenty years.  
  
Her mother.  
  
Next: I'm not telling you this time. 


	7. Lying

Chapter 7: Lying

Sydney looked in the window of the study to see Kate and the buyer pointing guns at one another, apparently frozen.  She couldn't see the buyer's face, and Kate's was partially obscured.  After taking only a split second to think about it, Sydney launched herself through the open window and hit the buyer hard on the temple, knocking her unconscious to the floor.  She turned to Kate.  "Are you all right?"  Kate's eyes flickered briefly to Sydney, and then returned to the floor.  She knelt and turned the buyer face-up.  Sydney's stomach dropped when she saw her.  "Mom," she gasped.  She quickly knelt beside Kate.

"She's breathing," Kate said after a moment.  "She probably has a concussion, but I think she'll be all right."

"I didn't know it was her," Sydney said.  She reached out and took the disk from her mother's limp hand.  "She must have been getting this for me."

Kate nodded.  Sydney had explained on the plane what little she knew of her missing two years and how Jack and Irina had tried to determine what had happened to her.  Since Jack and Sydney were both being closely watched by the CIA—Sydney supposedly "for her own protection"—Irina had been doing most of the work of the search over the last three months.  "I don't think she recognized me," Kate said softly.

"Are you sure?  She didn't shoot you; that's probably a good sign," Sydney said.  "What now?"

"The Brasilian agents will be here soon," Kate said.  "I suppose we'd better hide her."

Sydney nodded.  She and Kate had been ordered to disable, not kill; Dixon wanted to get some terrorists to interrogate if at all possible.  The Brasilian agents were coming in to remove the prisoners.  Two years ago, Sydney would have wanted her mother to be apprehended, but things had changed since then.  "I saw a shed out back.  We can hide her in there, then tell the others she got away through the house."

 Kate nodded, moved over to Cosovich, and checked for a pulse.  "He's alive.  Okay, how's this.  Nobody knows she's my mother, so we'll say I got here first and she got away while I was taking out Cosovich.  She was gone when you got here.  I give a nice vague description, they might not even figure out it was her."  Sydney nodded, and the two women carried Irina outside and hid her, then returned to the study just in time to meet the Brasilian agents.

***

Twelve hours later, they were in Dixon's office, where Kate handed him the disk.  "The buyer got away?"  he asked.  Kate nodded.  "Anybody you know?"

Kate shook her head.  "I just got a quick glimpse.  It was a Caucasian woman, long brown hair.  That's all I can tell you."

"Sydney, you didn't see her?"

"No, sir, we took different routes to the study.  She was gone when I got there."

Dixon nodded.  "Thank you, ladies.  I'll have this disk analyzed; Sydney, I'll let you know if there's anything applicable to your situation.  Dismissed."

With hidden sighs of relief, they left Dixon's office.  Kate went to her newly established desk, while Sydney sought out her father.  "Hey, Dad, would you like to have lunch with me today?" she asked.

"Sure, Sydney," he said, giving her an odd look.  "Something wrong?"

"Later," she mouthed quickly, and then said, "Can't I want to have lunch with my dad?"

"Of course," Jack said with a smile.  "I'll meet you at noon."

***

Meanwhile, Irina Derevko was lying in bed on her private plane, somewhere over the Atlantic.  She'd woken up after several hours in the shed and had managed, despite the worst headache of her life, to remember where she was supposed to meet her driver and make it there.  The rest of the night was a blur; fortunately, she could trust her staff to take care of her.  She'd suffered a pretty bad concussion, but there would be no permanent damage.

The medication she'd been given for her head was finally starting to take effect so that she could think again.  Now she was trying to sort through her memories and make some sense of them.  She'd just completed the deal and gotten her hands on the disk when Cosovich had gone down; that much was clear.  But after that, she wasn't sure: had her memory, influenced by the head injury perhaps, made over the woman who had pointed a gun at her into the image of her long-dead younger daughter?  Or was it possible that Tatiana had somehow survived?  Both of her daughters had apparently been killed in fires, with bodies identified.  If one daughter had survived, why not the other?

***

AN: Irina kind of sneaked up on me at the end of the last chapter.  I really did intend to properly introduce Jack and Kate, but Irina insisted on being first, and she's not really a woman you want to say no to.

Next: Bodily fluids alert!  Someone cries, someone throws up, someone dies.


	8. Scheming

Chapter 8: Scheming  
  
AN: Just to avoid any confusion, Kate's real name is Tatiana. It's the name Irina and all the Covenant people know her by.   
  
***  
  
She had sobbed on the last night of her childhood, a sixteen-year-old girl held in her mother's arms. Her small suitcase was packed; the next morning she would leave to begin training as a KGB agent at the "request" of Agent Alexander Khasinau. That had been the last time that anyone had seen her cry, and the last time she had cried for herself.  
  
She had cried six times since then. Once at Sydney's birth, for a child brought into a world of deception by a mother who would one day betray her. Once at Tatiana's birth, for a child who would never know her father or her sister. Once at Tatiana's death. Once at Sydney's death. Once, three months ago, at the news that Sydney lived. And now she cried again as she gazed at the rough piece of paper with smudged words written in charcoal. Merry Christmas, Mama. I love you. Come home soon, it said in Russian. A letter written, properly addressed, and sent by a four-year-old. She had never had a chance to respond to that letter, and she had never seen Tatiana's face again. Until last night.  
  
She still wasn't sure that the woman she had seen was Tatiana. But she thought she had seen recognition in the other's eyes. It was possible, and it was enough to get her to begin to search.  
  
But first, Jack had to be told. He was supposed to contact her tonight. She couldn't tell him over the computer, of course, so she would have to find a way to see him that wouldn't be impossibly dangerous for both of them. She looked at her watch. She had twelve hours to think of something.  
  
***  
  
"Two?" the waiter asked.  
  
"Three," Sydney said. "Someone else will be joining us." She didn't look back at her father for the look of surprise she knew would be there. "We'd like a booth, please."  
  
As soon as they were seated and the waiter was gone, Jack turned to Sydney. "Who else is coming, and why?"  
  
"You remember Kate Brown, the new agent that you met yesterday?"  
  
"Vaguely."  
  
Sydney took a deep breath. She and Kate had agreed that she would tell Jack before Kate showed up, but she still felt strange. "Mom was pregnant when she left. Kate's my sister and your daughter."  
  
Jack stared at her for a moment. "Are you sure?"  
  
"She looks like you. And she's got a wedding picture of you and Mom." When Jack didn't say anything, she said, "She used to work for the Covenant. She's the one that saved my life in Munich." Sydney was quite sure that her father wouldn't be spying for the Covenant, so she had told him what happened in Munich.  
  
"Godd*** it," Jack said. "How the h*** could Irina not tell me?"  
  
"She probably thinks I'm dead," said a voice from beside the table. They looked up to see Kate standing there. She slid into the booth next to Sydney. "We were both working for the KGB for four years; since I didn't see her or hear from her at all, I can only assume that they made her believe I was dead."  
  
Jack stared at Kate for a good thirty seconds without saying anything. Then he said, "You do look like me. How old are you?"  
  
"Twenty-three."  
  
"That would have made you about nine when the Soviet Union fell. How were you a KGB agent?" Jack asked.  
  
"Project Medea. They were training children to be spies," Kate said.  
  
Jack started to speak, but halted when the waiter showed up. "Can I get you something to drink?" he asked. They all ordered water and waited for him to leave.  
  
As soon as he was gone, Jack said, "I suppose your mother signed you up for Project Medea." As soon as he said it he wished he could take it back. Sydney was glaring at him, no doubt thinking that it wasn't much worse than what he had done to her. Kate just looked confused.  
  
"I'm pretty sure Mama didn't know about it," she said. "All the children in Russia were tested."  
  
"I'm sorry," Jack said. "I was overreacting."  
  
He blinked as identical expressions appeared on Sydney and Kate's faces, followed by identical shrugs. "I was pretty shocked when I found out, too," Sydney said.  
  
The waiter appeared again with their waters and then asked to take their orders. They hadn't even glanced at the menu, but they didn't want him to come back, so they all just ordered the special.  
  
Kate looked at her water glass, which had a lemon slice on the rim. "I could have sworn I said no lemon," she said. Then, while Jack and Sydney watched in confusion, she tore off a portion of her napkin, used it to remove the lemon, and wiped the rim of the glass where it had been. When she saw their expressions, she laughed. "I can't eat lemons," she said. "They make me throw up. Even a little bit of juice is enough to give me a really bad stomach ache."  
  
"My mother had the same problem," Jack said. He took a deep breath. "Kate, I'm not saying you're lying or anything, but I really think we should run a genetic comparison, just to make sure. I'll need a hair sample from you, and Sydney, you should probably give me one too just so we can be really sure."  
  
"Good idea. In fact, I was thinking the same thing," Kate said. She removed three tiny plastic bags and a small pair of scissors from her purse. They took turns cutting off bits of each other's hair and putting them in the bags. The waiter came with their food just as they were finishing up; he probably thought they were rather strange, but he didn't say anything. As they started eating, Kate said, "Sydney said you know how to contact Mama?"  
  
Jack nodded. "I'm scheduled to contact her tonight. I'd rather not discuss this over the computer, but arranging a meeting could be difficult. It's easy enough to slip my surveillance to go somewhere in L.A., but a trip out of the country is out of the question."  
  
"They're watching me too," Sydney said.  
  
"Me three," said Kate. "But I bet they're not watching your houses when you're not there. She could come in while you're at work, and you just go home; you don't even have to slip your tail."  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I can't believe I never thought of that," he said. "If we'd been doing that two years ago instead of meeting in various cities, I might not have gotten caught."  
  
Kate nodded; Sydney had told her about how Jack had been imprisoned for being in contact with Irina. "I'm still staying in the hotel Dixon sent me to, so that's probably not a good idea."  
  
"Weiss lives right underneath me, so my apartment's out," Sydney said. "But Dad, your house would be perfect." Jack still lived in the house where Sydney had grown up; it was close to the city, but secluded enough that someone could sneak in without too much trouble. "But do you think she'd be able to get into the country?"  
  
"She's never seemed to have a problem before," Jack said. "I'll set it up with her tonight. But how are you two going to get their without arousing suspicion?"  
  
Sydney looked at Kate. "I can take you apartment hunting," she said, "or shopping if you've found a place by then. I'll make sure Dad's house is between us and your hotel when we're done and say I need to stop by and pick something up."  
  
"And if anyone asks why you were there for so long, I'll say I invited you for dinner," Jack said. "It's so simple it just might work."  
  
The waiter showed up with their check and took their plates. Once again, they all sat in uncomfortable silence while he was there. Once he was gone, Kate said, "We should get going."  
  
The others nodded and got up to leave. As they stood up, Sydney happened to glance out the window to see an unpleasantly familiar face. "Sh**," she said. "What's Lindsey doing here?"  
  
Kate looked up and bit back a gasp of shock. Sydney had told her of his rather obsessive behavior in sending their father to prison and trying to hunt down their mother; now it suddenly made sense.  
  
"I'm sure we'll find out soon," Jack said before paying the bill.  
  
"I'm just going to stop in the restroom," Kate said. "You two go on without me." A few minutes later, on the way out of the restaurant, Kate surreptitiously swiped a lemon slice from a table waiting to be cleared. Once on the street, she sucked down a mouthful of lemon juice, then threw the slice in a nearby trash can before heading back to CIA headquarters.  
  
***  
  
A phone call was placed from Berlin to Zurich on a secured line. "Tell me you have good news, Mr. Kresniev," said Arvin Sloane when he answered.  
  
"I'm afraid not, sir. Irina Derevko got away again."  
  
"How, exactly, did that happen, Mr. Kresniev?"  
  
"The CIA showed up. They captured Kosovich. They're looking for Derevko in Brazil, but I rather doubt they'll find her."  
  
"I have no doubts that Irina Derevko is long gone from Brazil. May I remind you, Mr. Kresniev, that you are working on borrowed time? You assured me two months ago that Derevko was dead. I want her head on a platter. If I don't get it soon, I might settle for yours," Sloane said.  
  
"I understand, sir," said Kresniev.  
  
"I suppose you are also going to tell me that you have made no progress in locating Tatiana Derevko."  
  
"I haven't, sir. My asset in the U.S. government is watching for her, but he's seen no signs."  
  
"Your asset in the U.S. is completely incompetent. I have no doubt that the CIA suspect a leak due to his flagrant manipulations. I would suggest you find another method of looking for her. You have your work cut out for you, Mr. Kresniev." Sloane hung up the phone and sighed. Things were not going as well as he had hoped. He wasn't terribly concerned about Tatiana-she would show up soon, most likely in Los Angeles, and figure out her relationship to the Bristows. Irina was another matter entirely. Had he not been assured that she was dead, Sloane would never have allowed Sydney and Tatiana to meet. Kresniev had better eliminate Irina soon. If the three women got together, they could very well ruin everything.  
  
***  
  
Next: Due to the fact that this chapter turned out really long, the throwing up and dying have been postponed to the next chapter. 


	9. Murder

A/N: Thanks for all the reviews!  Sorry for the long wait, real life got in the way. (Hate it when that happens).

Chapter 9: Murder

When Sydney and Jack walked into JTF headquarters, they were not the least surprised to find Robert Lindsey ranting at Dixon about the CIA's incompetence in front of everyone.  "You authorized a mission without informing your NSC liaison, you didn't even bother telling her after the fact, and you got nothing.  Your agents retrieved a blank disk, Cosovich got away, and you don't even have a clue who was buying the disk."

Dixon somehow managed to remain calm.  "All of our intel indicated that the disk was genuine.  Cosovich escaped only after he was in NSC custody.  I didn't inform Ms. Reed beforehand because there wasn't time, and when I tried to tell her afterward, I couldn't find her.  I later found out that she was in a locked conference room with her husband for two hours.  Working on important NSC business, I'm sure."  Everyone in the room started turning red as they struggled to contain their laughter.  Several developed severe coughing fits.  Vaughn and Lauren chose exactly that moment to return from lunch, and no doubt wondered why everyone turned to stare at them.

Fortunately, Lindsey interrupted before anyone actually started laughing.  "There's still the matter of the buyer."  He turned from Dixon to glare pointedly at Jack and Sydney.  "Which two agents did you send on this mission, Mr. Dixon?  Was it perhaps the Agents Bristow?"

Dixon looked puzzled.  "Sydney was on the mission, along with Agent Brown."

"Ah, of course."  Lindsey spoke up so that everyone in the room couldn't help but hear him.  He was clearly enjoying every second of this.  "And as we all know, there is one terrorist that Sydney and Jack Bristow have no interest in apprehending."

"I don't understand, sir," Dixon said.

"Fortunately, the NSC was able to get more information than the CIA.  We found video footage of the buyer entering Cosovich's home on his security system.  The buyer was Irina Derevko."

There was silence for a moment.  Sydney tried to look shocked.

Dixon cleared his throat.  "Agent Bristow has always shown that she is more than willing to apprehend Derevko.  Besides, she didn't even see the buyer last night.  Agent Brown caught only a glimpse of her."

"I don't believe I've met Agent Brown," Lindsey said.

"She's new," Dixon said.  "I don't see her; she must not be back from lunch yet."

Vaughn spoke up.  "She was in the elevator with us.  She looked kind of sick; she headed in the direction of the restrooms."

Lindsey nodded.  He glared at Sydney again while speaking to Lauren.  "Ms. Reed, would you go see what's going on with Agent Brown, since I obviously cannot go in the women's restroom?  Miss Bristow, I'll speak to you in Agent Dixon's office."

***

Upon entering the restroom, Lauren heard the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting.  She knocked on the door of the only closed stall.  "Agent Brown?  It's Lauren Reed.  Are you all right?"

"No," came a voice from inside the stall.  "Must have been lemons in the special," Lauren heard her mutter.

"Lemons?"  Lauren asked.

"They make me sick," Kate answered.  Lauren heard her vomiting again.

"Um, can I get you anything?"

"A soda would be nice.  Something brown," Kate said when she was finished.

"I'll be right back."  The trip to the vending machine took Lauren right past Dixon's office; Lindsey saw her go by and was waiting for her when she returned with a Coke.

"How is Agent Brown?"

"She's really sick," Lauren answered.  "I was getting her a soda.  I don't think you want to talk to her today, sir."

Lindsey raised his eyebrows.  "Fine.  Tell her to go home, and I'll speak to her tomorrow."

Dixon was coming down the hall and overheard Lindsey.  "Which of my agents were you sending home, Director?"  He was more than a little angry at Lindsey, but knew better than to show it.

"Brown.  She's sick."  Lindsey turned away.  Lauren looked at Dixon and shrugged, and they both walked away.

Back in Dixon's office, Lindsey looked at Sydney.  She sighed inwardly.  She had already told him the story she and Kate had made up three times.  She wondered if he had read her file and knew about her time as a double agent; if he did, he would surely realize that he wouldn't get her to change her story whether it was true or not.

"Agent Bristow, I may not be able to prove it at the moment, but I'm sure you knew that your mother was the buyer, and that you let her go.  The moment I have any kind of evidence, rest assured that you will shortly find yourself in the same cell your father recently occupied.  Is that understood?"

Sydney could think of several replies to that question, none of which were helpful.  She clenched her hands into fists and thought, _He'll talk to Kate tomorrow, our stories will match, and he'll go back to Washington.  Just play nice._ She unclenched her fists and managed to say, without any overt hostility, "I understand perfectly."

"Good.  Go away."

For once, Sydney followed Lindsey's order gladly.

***

The final credits rolled for _I Love Lucy_, and Kate switched off the hotel room TV.  Her vomiting had ceased after an hour or two, and now she was fine.  It was 1 a.m.; it was time.  She rolled off the bed and put on a pair of sneakers, to go with the basic jeans and sweater she was wearing.  Her newly discovered father and sister almost certainly wouldn't approve of what she was about to do, she thought as she double-knotted the shoes.  Her mother would understand.

She left her room, went to the elevator, and went up four floors.  Her earlier hacking job into the CIA computer network had shown her that, wonder of wonders, she and Lindsey were staying in the same hotel.  She knocked on his door, loud enough that he would hear it if awake but soft enough that it was unlikely to wake him if he was asleep.  "Come in," he called.  He looked up when she entered, and his eyes widened in shock.  "Tatiana.  I thought you were dead."

She smiled, quickly taking in the plain manila envelope lying on the bed and the two shot glasses and bottle of whiskey on the table.  Her timing couldn't have been more perfect.  "You should know better than to believe rumors like that in this business, Bob.  What have you got?"

As she had expected, he assumed she was still working for the Covenant and that she was the contact he was supposed to make tonight.  "Where's the money?" he asked.

When she'd seen him this afternoon, Kate had hardly been able to believe it.  This idiot was the one causing all the trouble for the CIA?  He had no idea what the rules of the espionage game were.  She'd seen him meet with Kresniev several times, and she knew Kresniev thought he was important, but she'd never been able to figure out why until today.  And he'd kept trying to get her into bed with him, despite the fact that he was old enough to be her father.  Now she was glad that she'd followed Kresniev's orders to play along instead of telling him off.  "If your intel's good, maybe I'll show you where I've got the money," she said in her most seductive voice, smiling sweetly at him.

He smiled at her, his lascivious thoughts showing plainly on his face.  "It's all in there, baby," he said, pointing to the envelope.

She moved forward and picked up the envelope with her right hand, then used it to mask her left as she pulled out the surgical scalpel that was hidden up her sleeve.  Dropping the envelope, she quickly moved around behind Lindsey and slit his throat.  She pushed him away from her; he twisted and looked up at her.  "Why?" he choked out.

She shrugged.  "You messed with my family."  She stood and watched until his open eyes glazed over.  Then she unlatched the door of the hotel room before hiding in the bathroom.

She didn't have long to wait.  Pretty soon Lindsey's real Covenant contact was at the door.  He knocked, then pushed it open when he didn't get a response.  Moments later, he was dead as well.  She recognized him; another old lecher who'd tried to get into her pants.

Kate checked herself over and was pleased to see that she'd managed to avoid getting any blood on herself.  She placed the bloody scalpel on top of the envelope and left.  Back in her own room, she removed the thin, practically invisible gloves she had been wearing, then changed into pajamas and soon fell into a sound sleep.

Next: Lauren Reed has a really bad day.


	10. Investigation

Chapter 10: Investigation

When she got to work on Friday morning, Sydney was immediately pulled aside by her father.  "Did you talk to her?" she asked.

"Yes," Jack said, "and she suggested a meeting before I had a chance to.  She's coming today."

Sydney's eyes widened.  "Today?  That was fast."  Her brow wrinkled.  "Um, it's Friday.  Won't that mean she'll have to stay the whole weekend?"

"She said she'd stay until Monday.  So what exactly happened on this mission that Lindsey was so upset about?"

Sydney had meant to talk about that at lunch yesterday, but she realized it had slipped her mind.  She was about to tell him when she saw Vaughn entering JTF.  "Um, I'll tell you later…there's Vaughn…"

"Which means Lauren is sure to follow," Jack said.  "Lindsey's suspicious enough as it is…bring Kate tonight around seven?"

Sydney nodded and they separated.  Lauren still hadn't come in, she realized.  Oh, well.  She could tell both her parents soon…

"Agent Vaughn, is Ms. Reed with you?" she heard Dixon say.  "I need to talk to her."

"No, um, she got called in about four this morning…some kind of NSC business."

Kate overheard Vaughn's statement as she entered JTF and suppressed a smile.  She made her way over to Sydney's desk, where Sydney was pretending to read a file, and perched on the corner.  "Morning," she said.

Sydney looked up.  "Morning."  She mouthed "today" quickly.

Kate nodded.  "Hey, I still don't have a place to live, and I was wondering…it would be nice if you could give me some pointers on where to look."

"I can do better than that," Sydney said.  "How about I give you the grand tour of L.A. after work?"

"Sounds good," Kate said with a grin.  "I'll see you at five, then."

"Probably four," Sydney said.  "If there's nothing going on, Dixon usually lets us leave early."

"Sounds great.  See you later."

***

Later that afternoon, Lauren Reed left the hotel room, slumped against the wall, and rubbed her forehead.  The police forensics team was just finishing up, but she doubted they'd find much.  She had a feeling that whoever had done this had been a professional.  Her mind kept going back to the envelope that had been under the murder weapon.  It contained all kinds of classified information, and it had Lindsey's fingerprints on it.  Surely, it was a plant, she thought.  She desperately hoped that her boss hadn't been a spy.

 "Ms. Reed?"  Lauren looked up to see Dixon standing before her.  She'd sent the CIA pictures of the other man that had been murdered; it must be bad news if Dixon had shown up to deliver the news personally.  "I'm sorry.  The other man…his name was Hans Beiter…he worked for the Covenant."

"God," Lauren said.  "Is there any chance…could this be some kind of set-up?"

"Hotel security cameras caught Beiter when he came in.  He was obviously alone.  It doesn't look good."

Lauren thought for a moment, then decided to confide her suspicion in Dixon.  "I can't help wondering if this was an inside job.  Someone under him found out he was working for the Covenant and decided to get him out of the way on their own."

Dixon nodded slowly.  "It's a possibility."  He decided not to clue Lauren in to the fact that Jack Bristow had basically done exactly that to another spy a few years ago.  That wasn't common—or official—knowledge.  Neither was the fact that Sydney had murdered Lazaray in a manner eerily similar to that in which Lindsey had died.  If the NSC knew, the Bristows would immediately top their list of suspects.

Lauren sighed.  "Well, I'll probably be either here or at the police station all day.  You should probably get back to JTF.  Try to keep this quiet."

"Too late," Dixon said.  "It was on the noon news; half the office saw it.  They didn't give his profession, but they did say his name."

"God.  Could this get any worse?"  She was silent for a moment.  "Well, I'll let you know what we're going to do about the investigation."

Dixon nodded.  He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he left.

AN: I know this wasn't the most exciting chapter, but the next one will be better.

Next: Finally, the SpyRents get together!


	11. Truth

AN: Sorry about the long delay with the update.  I've got exams coming up, so it will probably be awhile before the next one, too.

Chapter 11: Truth

Jack pulled into his driveway a little after 5 p.m.  _Finally_, he thought.  He'd left JTF at the usual Friday time, around four, and stopped at the grocery on the way home.  As near as he could recall, all he had in his refrigerator was leftover pizza, leftover Chinese food, and some bread that had probably gotten moldy; he wasn't much of a cook.  He picked up eggs, butter, bread, milk, jam, bacon, and orange juice at the store; he was capable of cooking breakfast, he just usually didn't bother.  He'd almost gotten some other things, but changed his mind.  Laura had been an excellent cook, and had enjoyed it, but he didn't know if that was one of the things that carried over to Irina.  He could go back to the store later if necessary.  He'd also stopped at an independent genetics lab to get the results from the hair tests.  Kate was indeed his daughter, and Sydney's full sister.  It still amazed him every time he thought about it.

He opened the door and saw a yellow rose on the end table just inside the front door.  She was here, then.  He glanced in the living room on his way to the kitchen; many of her books were still shelved there, and he wouldn't have been surprised to see her sitting and reading, but the room was dark and empty.  In the kitchen, though, a post-it was stuck on the fridge with one word: "bedroom".  He opened the fridge and was surprised to find it much less empty than it had been this morning; she must have brought groceries.  As he stored his own groceries, he hoped Sydney still liked milk, since he now had two gallons.

Finished, he crumpled the note and threw it away, then headed upstairs.  What did she think she was doing, directing him to the bedroom?  _You're mad at her_, he thought.  _Just remember, no matter what she's wearing, you're mad at her._

He opened the door and smiled to himself as he realized his mistake.  Irina Derevko lay on "her" side of the bed, fully clothed except for shoes and fast asleep.  She was in the rather odd sleeping position that he had always thought of as uniquely "Laura": on her back, left leg extended, right leg tucked up so that her right foot was next to her left knee, right hand on her stomach, left arm over her head, palm up.  He used to tell her that she looked like a ballet dancer when she slept.

He moved closer quietly, not sure if he should wake her.  He noticed the huge bruise on her left temple and wondered how it had gotten there.  He reached down and gently caressed her face; she moaned and opened her eyes.

"Jack," she whispered.  She sat up, pulled his head down, and kissed him deeply.

He returned the kiss, but when it ended, he pulled away.  "I missed you, too," he said, "but we need to talk."

Irina nodded.  "How's Sydney?  Does she know I'm here?"

"She's coming over in less than two hours."

Irina raised her eyebrows.  "I do hope she's not going to turn me in."

"I'm reasonably certain that she's not."

Irina swung her legs out and sat on the edge of the bed; Jack sat beside her.  She looked down at her hands in her lap.  After a moment, she said, "Jack, I was pregnant when I left you."  When he didn't say anything, she continued, "I would have told you before, but there was never really a chance until we were looking for Sydney.  And…it seemed cruel to tell you then."  She looked up at him, but couldn't read his expression.  "Her name was Tatiana.  She died when she was four.  At least, that's what I thought until two days ago.  Now, I'm not sure."  Her gaze narrowed.  "You don't seem surprised."

"She's alive.  I met her yesterday."

Irina sucked in a rush of air.  "Oh, thank God," she whispered.  "Jack, I'm so sorry I didn't tell you…I just thought…"

"That I couldn't deal with two dead daughters at the same time?"  He raised his eyebrows.  "You're probably right."

"Wait, you said you met her?  Is she here in L.A."

"She's coming tonight with Sydney."

"Jack, this is wonderful."  She kissed him.  "Now I remember why I didn't let the bastards kill me."  She kissed him again.  "How long do we have until they get here?"

Jack smiled at her.  God, he'd missed her.  "Long enough," he said, pushing her down to the bed and covering his body with hers.  They didn't speak again for quite some time.


	12. Reunion

Chapter 12: Reunion

"Come on, you have to have liked at least one of these places," Sydney said.  She and Kate had looked at half a dozen apartment complexes, but Kate hadn't settled on anything.  Now they were in Sydney's car on their way to Jack's house; they were both shying away from discussing their mother.

Kate shrugged.  "I really liked your building, actually.  It must be nice to live so close to the ocean."  She sounded slightly wistful.

"So call and make an appointment to sign a lease.  You can't live in that hotel forever."

Kate didn't say anything.  Sydney looked over and saw that she had a pensive look on her face and was biting her lower lip.  Realization dawned.  "You're not staying, are you?" she said softly.  "You're going to go with Mom."

"If she'll take me."  There was silence for a moment.  "I looked for her, tried to contact her when I first left the Covenant.  But I couldn't find her; there were rumors going around that she was dead.  So I went with the next best option."  She looked at Sydney.  "I couldn't help wondering, when I first met you…I mean, you look so much like her…that's the real reason I came here."

"But you don't have to leave now."

"I told Dixon I wanted to take down the Covenant.  That's the truth.  And the CIA is never going to get that accomplished; they've got too many things that they're trying to do."

"We took down the Alliance," Sydney pointed out.

"Only because someone on the inside fed you exactly what you needed," Kate countered.

Sydney didn't have a response for that.  "We're almost there," she said instead.

***

"They're here," Jack called when he saw Sydney's car pull into the driveway.  He went to the front door and waited; when Sydney knocked, he opened it.  "Hi," he said, ushering them in and closing the door.  "Your mom's in the kitchen."  He pointed the way.

The girls looked at each other.  "You go first," Sydney said.

Kate nodded, took a deep breath, and walked into the kitchen.  Irina heard her enter and turn, and they just stared at each other for a moment.  "Mama," Kate whispered.

"Tatiana," Irina said.  She crossed the kitchen and pulled her daughter into a hug.  "Oh, baby, I thought you were dead," she said in Russian.  "I missed you so much."

Tatiana answered, also in Russian, "I missed you too, Mama."

Irina pulled back and held Tatiana at arm's length.  "You look so much like your father," she said.  "But I seem to remember your eyes being brown."

Tatiana smiled.  "Contacts," she said.  "And hair dye; my hair's the same color as yours."

Irina smiled briefly, but then her face grew serious again.  "What happened to you?  Who raised you?"

"Project Medea."

Irina frowned.  "Of course.  I should have guessed."

"Sydney's waiting to see you.  And she and Papa haven't heard the whole story of what happened to me, either.  Maybe I can tell all of you at the same time."

Irina nodded.  She slipped out into the hall; as soon as he saw her, Jack made himself scarce.  "Sydney."

"Mom."  They hugged.  "Thanks for looking for me."

Irina paused for a moment as her mind made the transition from Russian to English.  "Of course I looked for you.  I'm just glad you're back."

Sydney pulled away.  "How come you never told me I had a sister?"

"The same reasons I didn't tell your father.  I thought she was dead, and the time never seemed right."

Sydney noticed the bruise on her mother's temple for the first time and gestured toward it.  "Sorry about that," she said.  "I didn't know who you were when I hit you."

"Oh, that was you?" Irina said.  "I was wondering how I got knocked out without getting captured or killed."

Sydney grinned.  "We hid you in a shed."

Just then, Tatiana opened the kitchen door.  Through it, they could hear the oven timer.  "Um, I think the food's done," Tatiana said in English.  "I don't know how to do anything with food except eat it…"

Irina laughed as she went into the kitchen and removed a casserole from the oven.  Sydney sniffed the air.  "You used to make this when I was little," she said.

"It was one of your favorites," Irina answered.  "And one of your father's favorites.  Would you go tell him dinner's ready, Sydney?"

"Sure."

Sydney returned with Jack in moments, and shortly afterwards the four Bristows sat down together for their first-ever family dinner.

_Next: Find out how the Spy Babies got their names._


	13. Memories

Chapter 13: Memories

Sydney watched her parents with interest as they all sat down and began to eat.  They hadn't made any overt romantic gestures in front of their daughters, but they seemed a lot more comfortable together than she had ever seen them since her mother had returned.  They were sitting side by side at the table now, their chairs a bit closer than was strictly necessary.  Sydney had a sudden suspicion; without warning, she bent to look under the table.  As she had suspected, her mother's left hand was entwined in her father's right hand.

"Sydney!  What was that for?" Irina said.

"I wanted to see if you were holding hands under the table," Sydney said.  "I remember you used to do that when I was little."

Tatiana did the exact same thing Sydney had done to get her own look under the table.  Then she came back up and calmly resumed eating as if nothing had happened.

"Aren't you going to comment, Tatiana?" Irina said.

Tatiana shrugged.  Sydney looked confused.

"Tatiana?  Is that your real name?" Sydney asked.

Tatiana and Irina both nodded.  "By the way," Tatiana said, "I've been wondering how Sydney got such an interesting name and I ended up with a perfectly common Russian girl's name."

"Yeah, how did I get my name?" Sydney asked.  "I've always kind of wondered.  Was I named after the city?"

Irina and Jack both raised their eyebrows and looked at each other.  They had a quick "conversation" without speaking before turning back to their daughters.  "Well, yes, you were named after the city," Irina said, "but there's rather more to the story than that."

Jack continued, "Your mother was two weeks shy of her due date when the CIA decided that it was absolutely imperative to send me to Australia.  Your mother was not happy, to put it mildly."

"As I recall, I threatened to kill you if you weren't back when the baby was born," Irina said with a slight smile.

"And I believed you, too," Jack said.  "But I didn't have a choice, so I went.  When I got back, there was a message waiting for me at the airport that my wife was in labor.  I'm lucky I didn't get into an accident on the way to the hospital.  As soon as she saw me in the doorway, your mother started throwing things at me.  And she said…"

"'Don't you come near me, Jonathan Donahue Bristow!  If your job is so important, why don't you just go back to Sydney and name our daughter CIA?'" Irina said.  "And then I temporarily forgave him and let him come in just so I could verbally abuse him while I was in labor…"

"And physically, too," Jack interrupted.  "You broke three bones in my hand while you were pushing, remember?"

"Served you right for trying to tell me when to push," Irina said.  "Anyway, then you were born, and I forgave him again…"

"And I forgave her the broken hand—not that I was ever really all that upset about it—anyhow, we'd had a boy's name all picked out, Steven Andrew, but we hadn't been able to agree on a girl's name.  And I said, 'Maybe you had the right idea earlier.'"

"And I thought he was kidding, and I said, 'Jack, we are not naming our daughter CIA.'"

"I said, 'No, of course not, but what about Sydney?'"

"And we looked at you, and it was perfect."

They all sat there smiling for a moment, until Tatiana said, "Somehow I have a feeling my story's not nearly that exciting."

"Well, it has its good points," Irina said.  "You were named after my sister.  She died when I was eleven."

"What happened to her?" Tatiana asked.

"I didn't know what it was at the time, but looking back, I think she probably had leukemia," Irina said.  "There wasn't much that could be done at the time.  But here's the interesting part: the night she died, she told me that I would have two daughters and asked me to name the younger one after her.  Ever since you were born I've wondered how she knew."

Tatiana looked confused.  "I don't think my grandparents ever mentioned her."

Irina frowned and looked away for a moment.  Then she looked back and said, "That's because they weren't your grandparents."

Next: Tatiana's story


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Tatiana

Tatiana looked very confused.  "They weren't my grandparents?"

"No.  We were going to explain it to you when you were a little older.  My father died when I was fourteen, and my mother died while I was in America.  I would have left the KGB if I could, but I didn't get a choice, so I had to foster you out."  She paused for a moment.  "I did choose them very carefully.  They were good people, and I never regretted having you live with them."

Tatiana raised her eyebrows.  "Not even when you found out they'd been executed for 'disloyalty'?"

"No.  My superiors told me that they'd committed treason, and that you had been killed along with them, but I always believed that it was because of something I'd done.  I've been trying for years to figure out what it was that made them angry."

There was silence for a moment, until Tatiana said, "But now you know it wasn't you that got them killed, it was me."  She looked away from everyone and swallowed hard.

Irina got up, moved around the table, and drew her into a hug.  "Oh, Tanyushka, it wasn't your fault.  You were four, for heaven's sake."

Tatiana started to cry in earnest.  She slipped out of the chair and onto the floor and cried into her mother's shoulder while Jack and Sydney watched uncomfortably.  She quieted herself quickly, though.  She pulled back and began to speak, lapsing into Russian.  "He tried to make me hate you.  He said that you didn't like me any more, that if you loved me you would come to see me.  I never believed him.  I always kept hoping that you would come."

"Who, baby?" Irina said in Russian, tucking Tatiana's hair behind her ears.

"Kresniev."

Irina's face hardened.  "That bastard," she said.  "He tried to comfort me at your funeral."  She switched back to English.  "Come on, sweetheart, let's get up off the floor."  They did, and then they all stood there looking at one another for a moment.

"Um, is everybody finished?" Sydney said to break the tension.  The others nodded, and they all worked in silence to clear the table.

***

A few minutes later the dishwater was loaded and they all settled in the living room, Sydney and Tatiana were in armchairs while Jack and Irina sat comfortably close on the couch, Jack with his arm around Irina's shoulders.

"So, you all probably want to hear my life story now, right?" Tatiana asked.

Sydney said, "Hey, I've told you mine.  Yours can't be much worse, right?"  Everyone chuckled at that.

Tatiana slipped her shoes off and pulled her knees up to her chest.  "Well, you know about the first five years.  Then I was chosen for Project Medea and started training to become a spy."

Next: Flashbacks!


	15. Chapter 15

AN: I think this might warrant an R rating, but I'm not sure.  This is definitely not a happy chapter.  Child abuse, torture…not pretty.  Tatiana is remembering all of this, but she's only actually saying what's in italics.

Chapter 15: Breaking

"Then I was chosen for Project Medea and started training to become a spy.  I hated it.  I refused to do anything they told me.  That went on for six weeks."

"No."  The child stood with her legs apart, arms crossed over her chest, glaring up at the man who towered over her.

"Come now, Tatiana.  Run around the track for me, just once, and then I'll let you have a meal with the other children instead of alone in your room," Kresniev said.

"I don't want other children.  I want my Mama."

A sad expression appeared on Kresniev's face, but the five-year-old knew that he was pretending.  "Your Mama doesn't want to come see you, Tatiana, because you're being a bad girl.  If you do as you're told maybe she'll want to come for a visit."

"You're lying!" the child screamed.  "She wants to come see me, she doesn't want me to be good for you, you're a bad man!"  She flew at Kresniev, ineffectually punching and kicking his legs.  She was immediately pulled off him and carried, struggling, into a different room where she was efficiently strapped down to a table.  Then Kresniev appeared above her, holding The Needle in his hand.  "No," she whimpered.  As always, when she saw The Needle, she regretted her actions, told herself that next time she would just do what he told her.

"I am sorry, Tatiana," Kresniev said smoothly.  "I hate having to punish you, but you've been a very bad girl."

_Liar_, she thought as he tied a tourniquet around her upper arm and put The Needle into a vein.  Then she stopped thinking and started screaming as he depressed the plunger and liquid fire raced through her body.

Later, she lay silent, her voice long gone.  She wanted to sleep, but she still felt as if flames were licking at her skin.  She heard footsteps, then felt her restraints being unlocked.  She didn't even try to move, even though every touch was agony.

"Where did you get this one?" a voice asked.  The voice was familiar, and Tatiana immediately associated it with a face: a man who often watched her from the shadows while Kresniev dealt with her.  Cuvee.  That was his name.

Kresniev laughed as Tatiana felt herself lifted up and carried.  "She is remarkable, isn't she?  Six weeks, and she's still fighting, when most of them have given up in less than a week.  She's Derevko's spawn."

A chuckle.  "That explains it, then.  But if she's truly her mother's daughter it might be a lost cause to try and break her."

"She'll break eventually.  I'm starting to see cracks.  And once she's mine and I've got her trained, she will be incredible.  Derevko is legendary, yes, but even she broke eventually."

"No, she didn't.  They merely found other means of controlling her."

The movement stopped, and Tatiana heard the sound of the door to her "room" opening.  "You're telling me that Irina Derevko spent _twelve months_ in Kashmir and didn't break?  That's impossible."

"I don't know how she did it; no one does.  Of course, we were fairly limited in our methods for the first half of her stay due to her pregnancy."

The person carrying her started walking again, but moved only a few steps before Tatiana was placed on a hard surface.  "So how are you controlling her if she never broke?" Kresniev asked.  Tatiana didn't get to hear the answer, though; instead, the door closed again.  Relieved, the child squirmed slightly.  The cold stone that she was lying on cooled the last vestiges of the pain, and she soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

"Then, I met Sergei."

Tatiana woke at the sound of the door opening again.  She scrambled to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest.  But when the door opened, it wasn't Kresniev, just a boy.  An older boy, but not by much.  "Hello," she said.

"Hello," the boy answered.  "So you're the new one.  My name's Sergei."

"I'm Tatiana.  Can you help me get out of here?  I need to find my Mama."

He shook his head.  "Sorry, Tanya, nobody gets out of this place.  And nobody gets to see their Mama, either."

"Kresniev said she would come if I did what he told me."

"He's lying," Sergei said.

"I know."

"Want to go for a walk?"

She shrugged and followed him.  The halls were dark.  "Do you do what he tells you?" she asked Sergei.

"Yes," Sergei answered.  "Because if I don't, I know I'll never have a chance to get away.  If he thinks I like him, I might get a chance someday."

"Really?  Could I pretend, too?" Tatiana asked.

"That's why I'm here, Tanya."  He led her into a schoolroom.  Through the bars on the windows, she could see the night sky for the first time in weeks.  She didn't look for long, though; there were two other children in the room.

"These are Mikel and Nadia; they're both seven," Sergei said.  "This is Tatiana," he said to the others.  "She's strong, like us."

The four children sat down and talked for nearly an hour before Sergei said it was time for them to go.  He walked Tatiana back to her small, empty room and locked her in.

The next day, as much as she hated to do it, she agreed to run around the track after only a short argument with Kresniev.  She had been rewarded when she'd been allowed to have lunch with the other children, and Sergei had winked at her.

"There was a group that managed to make Kresniev think that they were loyal to him, and Sergei was the leader.  He told me how to pretend that I was breaking, to make Kresniev think that I belonged to him.  I stopped asking for my mother, and pretended that I'd forgotten.  So I spent the next four years training to be a spy—languages, combat, weapons, technology…all that stuff.  And then the Soviet Union collapsed."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 15

AN: I think I did it backwards last time.  This time, what's happening in the present day is in normal text, and flashbacks are in italics.

"I was nine when the Soviet Union fell.  Kresniev got orders from higher up to terminate Project Medea," Tatiana said.  Irina gasped.

Jack looked at her.  "What is it?"

"When the KGB said they were 'terminating' a project, it generally meant that they killed everyone involved.  When the USSR fell, the KGB had to hide a lot of what they had been doing.  It usually meant locking everyone in a building and setting fire to it," Irina said.

Tatiana nodded.  "That's what happened."

"How many children?"  Jack asked.  He knew that the KGB had gone to extremes that the CIA would never have condoned, but he'd never thought that they had done something like this.

"Thirty-three in my group," Tatiana said.  "We were all between about nine and twelve.  I think there might have been one or two more age groups, though."  She waited for a moment, but no one said anything, so she continued.  "The KGB basically cut loose all of their agents to fend for themselves at that point.  Kresniev must have seen it coming, and decided to get a head start.  He took four of us out of the building right before it was set on fire.  The funny thing was, there were twenty-nine children who were actually loyal to him, and four who hated him and wanted to get away; Kresniev picked the four of us who were lying to him."

A hand was shaking Tatiana's left shoulder.  The nine-year-old opened her eyes to see Kresniev standing above her and silently rolled out of bed, knowing better than to ask questions—left shoulder waking meant that stealth was required.  "Get dressed," Kresniev whispered.  "Then meet me in the hallway."  She nodded and he left.  She dressed, noting that Nadia was getting dressed also and that the other twelve girls in the room were still asleep.

There had been rumors floating around the KGB, so prevalent that they had reached the ears of the children hidden away in their secret training facility.  The rumors told of changes coming to Russia.  She, Sergei, Nadia, and Mikel had agreed that their chance to get away just might come with these changes.  Tatiana wondered if that chance would come tonight.  She unscrewed the loose leg from her bed and shook out the contents: a picture of her mother in a white dress with a man she had never seen, and a tarnished silver chain with two rings on it, one a plain gold band and the other a matching band with a single diamond.  She didn't know what the rings or the photo meant, but they were all she had left of her mother.  They had been taken from her when she arrived at Medea, of course, but the others had helped her to steal them back two years ago.

When she was ready, she and Nadia left together.  When they saw Kresniev in the hall with Sergei and Mikel, the four of them looked at each other uneasily.  Had they been found out?  But they remained silent as Kresniev led them out of the building and herded them into a car.  He remained outside the car and pressed a button on a small black box; the building they had just left suddenly burst into flame.  The four children watched, horrified, as the building that had housed them for the past several years burned.  When the roof caved in, Kresniev got into the car and drove into the night without a word.

The memory reminded Tatiana.  "Oh, Mama, I almost forgot," she said.  She pulled something from her pocket, got up, and handed it to Irina.

Irina stared at the rings in shock.  "Oh God…I thought these were gone forever…"

"What is it, Mom?"  Sydney asked, getting up to look.

"My wedding and engagement rings."  She looked at Tatiana.  "You've had these all this time?"

Tatiana nodded.  "I always hoped I could give them back to you someday."

Irina turned and handed the rings to Jack.  "Would you…"  She held out her left hand.

Jack slid the engagement ring onto her finger first, then the wedding band.  Then he reached into his own pocket and handed a ring to Irina.  She smiled and put the ring on his finger.  They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, then moved their heads together and kissed.  When their hands started moving lower, Sydney cleared her throat.

They broke apart and looked at their daughters, both turning pink.  "While I'm glad you're getting along," Sydney said, "we have to leave pretty soon.  You two have all weekend."

"Yes, of course," Irina murmured.

"Um…"  Tatiana said.  Sydney glanced at her, suddenly remembering Tatiana's plan to join Irina.  "Mama, could I talk to you alone for a few minutes?" Tatiana continued.

"Of course," Irina said, looking confused.  "Let's go in the kitchen."  The two of them got up and left, leaving Sydney and Jack in the living room.

"Well, since my cover was that I was picking stuff up here, I suppose I should get something together," Sydney said.

"Tatiana's leaving, isn't she?" Jack said.

"Yeah."

Jack frowned.  "Well, I can't say I blame her."

Sydney was quiet for a moment as she absentmindedly picked out some books to take home.  Then she said, "We could go too."

"Sydney, after you disappeared, I wanted to leave the CIA and work with your mother full time.  She talked me out of it.  You and I don't really know what that life is like.  I think Tatiana knows what she's getting into."

Sydney was lost in thought for a moment, then nodded.  "But, Dad, if the NSC finds out that I killed Lazarey…"

"Then it might become necessary for you to leave, yes.  I think we should work out a plan…"  He fell silent as Tatiana and Irina came back in.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"Are you leaving?" Sydney asked Tatiana as she and Irina came back in.

"Not until Monday," Tatiana answered with a slight grin.  "I'll make it look like I'm leaving tonight, then hang out for a couple of days and leave with Mama on Monday."

"I thought she could stay here, if that's all right, Jack," Irina said.

Jack nodded.  "I'm sorry you're leaving so soon," he said to Tatiana.  "You sure you don't want to stay a couple more weeks?"

"She needs to leave with me now, before the Covenant finds out she's here," Irina said.  Jack and Sydney looked puzzled, and Irina continued, "There's something that Tatiana's going to pick up for me tonight.  I'll show it to you tomorrow and explain then."

Jack raised his eyebrows, but knew he'd learn no more tonight.  When Irina Derevko decided to be enigmatic, there was no persuading her otherwise.  "Well, if Tatiana's here, then you could come over tomorrow too, Sydney."

"Yeah, I'll do that.  Maybe I'll even stay the night," Sydney answered.  "I guess if we're all going to be here tomorrow, Tatiana and I should get going."  Tatiana nodded.

"What time will you get here tomorrow?" Jack asked.  The girls looked at each other.  "Both of you," he added.

Sydney shrugged.  "Nine-ish?"  Jack nodded.

"Maybe around three," Tatiana said.

"AM, I presume?" Jack said.

"Of course.  It depends on how long it takes me to get everything done."

Jack and Irina looked at each other.  "At least one of us will be awake," Irina said.

"Don't try to pick the lock," Jack said.  "I've got it rigged.  We'll leave the back door unlocked for you."

Tatiana nodded.  She helped Sydney gather up the books they had chosen, and they headed out.

***

At 12:47 am, an apparently middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her brown hair walked openly into the hotel lobby with her luggage, checked out, and left.  The two agents who were tailing Kate Brown didn't even give her a second glance.

At 12:52, the middle-aged woman reached Kate Brown's rental car.  She quickly found the tracking device on the underside of the car and carefully lowered it to the same position on the concrete.  Then she got in the car, where she removed her wig, washed her face, and re-applied her makeup.  The surveillance agents would have easily recognized her now.

At 1:05, a young woman walked into Director Dixon's office at JTF headquarters and placed an envelope on his desk.  The surveillance camera in his office caught her face, but the cameras monitoring the entrances and exits to the buildings, the ones that were actively monitored at night, didn't see her.

At 1:27, the alarm line at a First National Bank branch was cut.  Five minutes later, the cameras in the bank vault recorded a young, blond-haired woman as she walked in, broke into safety deposit box number 47, removed a bulky manila envelope, and walked out.  That particular box had not been opened in almost 25 years, but was paid for by regular transfers from a bank in Switzerland.

At 1:41, Kate Brown's rental car was parked at the car agency's airport location and the keys were dropped in the overnight return box.  In the international terminal, Kate Brown purchased a ticket to Auckland with her credit card, cleared security with her luggage, and then disappeared.

At 2:47, a brown-haired, brown-eyed young woman in jeans and a hooded sweat jacket, wearing a backpack and carrying a laptop case, stepped off a public bus, walked six blocks, climbed a fence, cut through a hedge, climbed another fence, and stood for a few minutes under a tree in the backyard of a suburban house.  She waited until the moon was shadowed by a cloud, then entered the house.

***

Irina heard the soft click as the back door opened and got up from the couch, careful not to disturb her sleeping husband.  She went into the kitchen and smiled at her daughter.  "That's a good wig," she said, nodding at Tatiana's now brown hair.

"It's not a wig," Tatiana answered.  "I un-dyed my hair in an airport restroom.  Removable hair dye is great."

Irina smiled.  "And with the contacts out, you're actually starting to look like you might be my daughter.  Did everything go all right?"

"Perfectly."  Tatiana put her backpack down on the table and pulled out the envelope she'd gotten from the bank.  She handed it to her mother.  "What is it?"

Irina opened the envelope and pulled out a very old book.  "My very first Rambaldi manuscript," she said.  "I stole it from Arvin Stone twenty-five years ago.  But we'll talk more about that tomorrow.  Let me show you where you're sleeping."


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Sydney unlocked the front door of her father's house with the key he'd given her last night and went in.  "Hello?" she called, not sure if anyone was awake.

"Morning," Tatiana called, walking out from the living room.

Sydney's jaw dropped when she saw her sister's changed appearance.  "Okay, how do you do that?" she said.

"Do what?"

"Make yourself look completely different.  It's not just the hair and eye colors; you changed your face somehow."

Tatiana grinned.  "Makeup," she said.  "There are tricks you can do to emphasize or de-emphasize certain features."

"Well, whatever you did today, keep doing it.  You look great."

"I'm not wearing any makeup, actually.  For the first time in about ten years.  I usually try to make myself look less distinctive, which means toning down my best features."

"You look like Mom all of a sudden.  Well, kind of a blend of Mom and Dad, but you've got Mom's eyes and hair."

"And you've got Dad's eyes and otherwise look like Mama.  Funny how that turned out."

"Where are they, anyway?  Are they sleeping?" Sydney asked.

"Yeah.  Dad was asleep when I got here, but I guess Mom woke him up, and they didn't go back to sleep until about two hours ago."

"What were they doing up so late?"

"Having sex," Tatiana answered nonchalantly.  "Five times.  You think they know how thin the walls in this house are?"

Sydney laughed.  "I don't think so.  I brought earplugs for tonight; I have an extra pair if you want them."

"That would be great."

"So why aren't you sleeping now?"

"Auto-circadian meditation.  All the benefits of sleep…"

"In a fraction of the time," Sydney finished.  "Yeah, Mom does that too.  But doesn't that take quiet too?"

"Once you've got it down you can learn to tune things out.  Although tuning out that was impossible," Tatiana said, glancing at the ceiling.  "So I put headphones on and listened to music."

Sydney grinned.  "I don't suppose you could teach me some of those makeup tricks?"

"Sure.  It took me about three months to learn everything I know now, so I can't teach you everything in one morning, but we could do a few things."

"Works for me."  They headed up to Sydney's childhood room to use her old vanity.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

A little after noon, Irina and Jack finally got up and made their way downstairs.  "Good morning," Irina said as she opened the kitchen door.

"Good afternoon, you mean," said Tatiana.

"We made you brunch," Sydney said.

"Correction: Sydney made brunch.  I watched," Tatiana said.

"It looks great," Jack said, eyeing the eggs, bacon, and toast.  Lots of toast.  "Um, I think you made a little too much toast."

"No, we didn't," Tatiana said with a grin on her face that suddenly made her parents rather nervous—especially when Sydney developed a similar grin.

Irina turned on Sydney.  "You told her the toaster story, didn't you?"

Sydney's expression changed to a very innocent-looking one.  "We just thought you two would need lots of nourishment.  To replenish your energy reserves after this morning's activities."

Jack and Irina looked at each other, sighed, and shook their heads simultaneously.  "Let's eat," Jack said.

They all grabbed plates and started eating; all of them had good appetites, and they managed to finish it all.  Even all the toast.

***

Irina leaned back in her chair and groaned.  "I should not have had that fourth slice of toast."

"It's good for you.  You're too thin," Jack responded.

"Jack, how many times do I have to tell you that I am never going to look like Laura again?"

"I know that, Irina," Jack said in exasperation.  "But you're thinner than you were a year ago, and I didn't like it then."

Irina just sighed and shook her head.  "Let's get these dishes cleaned up."

For her part, Sydney looked on in amazement.  Her parents had obviously worked out a lot of their issues during the time they spent looking for her, if her mother could speak of "Laura" so casually.

Once the dishes were in the dishwasher, Tatiana turned to her mother.  "Okay, Mama, I want to see what's in that book."

"What book?"  Jack and Sydney said simultaneously.

Without saying a word, Irina beckoned them all into the living room, where she pulled an ancient book off a bookshelf and flipped through it until she found a particular page.  The other three sat on the couch, and she lay the open book on the coffee table in front of them.  "That's why I've been obsessed with Rambaldi for the past twenty-five years," Irina said.

Jack, Sydney, and Tatiana could do nothing but stare at the book in shock.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20  
  
On the page was a drawing of three people. Jack was on the left, Irina in the middle, and on the right. "Who's that?" Tatiana asked, pointing to the second man once she recovered from the shock of seeing her parents' faces in a 400-year-old book.  
  
"Arvin Sloane," Jack answered. He looked up at Irina. "What does it mean?"  
  
"I don't know," she answered. "At the time I acquired this manuscript, I didn't know how to decode Rambaldi. I have no idea what the text says."  
  
"Where did you get it?" Jack asked.  
  
"I stole it from Sloane in 1980. I broke into his house to steal intel, and the book was open to that page on his desk. So I know he's seen the drawing, but I don't know whether he managed to decode any of the text."  
  
They all looked at the drawing for a few more seconds. Then Sydney said, "Well, shouldn't we get started on decoding this thing?"  
  
Just then, two beepers went off. Sydney and Jack looked to see that both of their pagers read "47911". "Sh*t," Jack muttered as they silenced the pagers.  
  
"We've got to go to work," Sydney said.  
  
Tatiana grinned sheepishly. "I suspect that this would be the CIA discovering that I've vanished into thin air. Sorry. I probably should have thought of this earlier."  
  
"That's all right," Jack said. "You two can work on the document while we're gone."  
  
"Let's take my car," Sydney said on their way out the door.  
  
***  
  
As she backed out of the driveway, Sydney said, "So, Dad, you and Mom seem to have worked things out pretty well."  
  
Jack glanced at her. "You could say that."  
  
"So what happened to change her mind about her?"  
  
Jack was silent for a moment. "When we were looking for you, she made me realize three things. One, she loves you very much. Two, she fell in love with me while she was on her assignment. And three, I realized that the person I fell in love with, her basic personality, wasn't fake. She's changed since then, of course, but so have I." He looked out the window for a moment before continuing. "Even on the worst days, when I believed that nothing about Laura had been real, that it had all been a betrayal, I never could quite make myself stop loving her. So when I realized that Irina and Laura were basically the same person, well." He glanced over at Sydney and saw a smile playing over her lips. "Sydney, there will always be issues between us. There's still a lot we haven't discussed. I know very little about what happened to her in the years after she left us, for instance." He paused again. "So what do you think about all this?"  
  
Sydney glanced briefly at her father before returning her attention to the road. "I think she's good for you, Dad," she said. "You certainly seem more relaxed this weekend than I've seen you." She trailed off. "In a very long time," she finished softly.  
  
"Since your mother left," Jack said, nodding. "Sydney, you should know it wasn't her choice to leave us. The KGB ordered the extraction, and if she'd refused, they would have killed us."  
  
"I kind of figured that," Sydney said. "But.could she have turned herself in to the CIA? We could have gone into some kind of protection."  
  
Jack took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Sydney, you were only a child during the Cold War. The climate.the KGB was very powerful. The CIA could have hidden us from them, yes, but it would have been in an environment more like a prison than the relatively normal life that people in the Witness Protection Program have now. You wouldn't have had any chance at a normal childhood. And your mother.you saw what happened when she turned herself in three years ago. If she'd told the CIA who she was during the Cold War, they would have tortured her, bled her dry of information, and killed her."  
  
Sydney frowned. "God. I guess.I just wish things could have been different."  
  
Jack reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. "Me too, Sydney. Me too." 


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21  
  
Once Jack and Sydney were out the door, Irina sat down on the couch and watched as Tatiana picked up the manuscript and flipped through it. "How much do you know about Rambaldi?" she asked in Russian.  
  
"I know that he was an inventor and a prophet who lived about 400 years ago, and that the CIA has most of his inventions and some of his manuscripts. The Covenant has a lot of manuscripts, too," Tatiana answered in Russian. "This shouldn't be too hard to decode."  
  
"You think so? It took me years to learn to decode Rambaldi."  
  
Tatiana shrugged. "Deciphering a code is easier than going into a place where you don't know the language and learning it by listening, and I can pick up a new language that way in about two weeks."  
  
Irina raised an eyebrow. "How many languages do you speak?"  
  
"Forty or fifty, I guess. I've never really kept track."  
  
"I'm impressed."  
  
"It's easy to learn new languages when you're five. And the more languages you know, the easier it is to learn new ones."  
  
"That's true." Irina was quiet for a moment. "Let's move to the kitchen table. Then we'll see how far you actually get with decoding this thing," she said with a smile.  
  
***  
  
An hour and a half later, Sydney and Jack returned. They soon found Irina and Tatiana in the kitchen. "That was fast," Irina said when she saw them.  
  
"Tatiana, they don't seem to know you're missing yet," Jack said.  
  
Tatiana frowned. "Then why."  
  
Sydney looked annoyed. "The new big giant head from the NSC just got here to investigate Lindsey's murder. He apparently had to call us all in to introduce himself. I swear, he's almost as bad as Lindsey was."  
  
Irina raised her eyebrows. "Wait, Lindsey's dead? When did this happen?"  
  
"Apparently right around the time I was talking to you online," Jack said. "I was meaning to ask you if you'd had anything to do with it."  
  
"I wish I could claim responsibility, but unfortunately I can't."  
  
"I can," Tatiana said. They all turned to her in shock. "He was working for the Covenant," she continued. "I killed him and his Covenant contact and left plenty of evidence of his espionage."  
  
"Shouldn't you have turned him in to the CIA?" Sydney said.  
  
"Are you sorry he's dead?" Tatiana countered. "He's probably been persecuting you both on the Covenant's orders." Sydney continued to look skeptical, but to Tatiana's surprise Jack looked understanding. "He was the lousiest spy I have ever encountered who went more than ten minutes without getting caught," she continued "Kresniev had been feeding him false information about the Covenant; if he'd been caught and interrogated and the CIA and NSC had acted on what he told them, it would probably have gotten a lot of American agents killed."  
  
"I see," Sydney said. She couldn't help feeling a little betrayed. True, she had only known Tatiana for a few days, but she just hadn't expected her sister to be someone who could murder with so little provocation. But then, it did sound like her actions had been for the greater good.  
  
"Well. How's the deciphering going?" Jack said, breaking the tension.  
  
"We've only gotten through a few pages, but what we've found is very interesting," Irina said. Sydney and Jack both moved to sit down at the table, intrigued. "Apparently, all four of us are directly descended from Rambaldi, Sydney and Tatiana doubly so. And so is Sloane." 


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22  
  
Sydney immediately felt rather ill. "Ew. We're related to Sloane?"  
  
"Only distantly," Irina said. "According to this, Rambaldi had three children, and your father, Sloane, and I are each descended from one of them." She paused for a moment. "If I had deciphered this years ago, I would have known that Tatiana couldn't have died."  
  
"How's that?" Jack said.  
  
"Rambaldi predicted that two of his heirs would marry and have two daughters seven years apart." She looked at Sydney, then at Tatiana. "His 'greatest work'-I believe he's referring to Il Dire-requires the two of you to activate it, although it's not clear on how exactly that's supposed to happen."  
  
"He doesn't, by chance, refer to us as 'the activators', does he?" Tatiana asked. Irina nodded. "Now what I've been deciphering makes slightly more sense. He says that 'the activators' are bound together by unbreakable ties but won't meet until they're adults. Also that they won't recognize each other when they do meet. But here's the weird part: he said that 'the destroyer' would bring us together earlier but that we wouldn't remember it."  
  
"Well, there's plenty that I don't remember," Sydney said. "We could have met during my missing two years."  
  
"Have you had any missing time in the last two years, Tatiana?" Irina asked.  
  
"I was in a coma for three weeks about a year and a half ago. I got stabbed and lost a lot of blood."  
  
"Do you remember getting stabbed?" Jack asked.  
  
Tatiana thought for a moment. "I didn't remember when I first woke up. I started thinking later that I remembered, but it might just have been because Sergei described it to me."  
  
"Where did you get stabbed?" Sydney asked. Tatiana pointed to her left lower abdomen. Sydney's eyes widened as she pointed to the same spot on her right side.  
  
"I think we should compare these scars," Tatiana said. She started to unbutton her jeans, and Sydney followed suit. Jack turned slightly red and turned his back.  
  
"You can turn back around, Dad, we're not showing anything," Sydney said as they stood next to each other and looked down at the mirror image scars. "These look pretty darn similar."  
  
As they zipped up their jeans again, Tatiana said, "So where is this machine now?"  
  
"The NSC has it," Jack said. "Sloane turned it in when he negotiated his pardon."  
  
"And we all know how good the NSC is at keeping track of things," Irina said wryly.  
  
"We do?" Tatiana looked confused.  
  
Jack and Irina shared a smile. "Sloane and I have both been quite successful at stealing Rambaldi artifacts from the NSC," Irina said.  
  
"So do you think the machine is activated?" Sydney said. "And if it is, why would Sloane turn it in?"  
  
"I don't know," Irina said.  
  
"I don't think it's activated," Tatiana said. "The manuscript says that the destroyer will gain the goodwill of the world before Rambaldi's weapon is activated."  
  
"Hmm. And it would be rather difficult for him to gain the world's goodwill without turning over the machine.he must have some plan to get it back," Jack said.  
  
The others nodded. "Well, that's all I've decoded so far," Tatiana said after a moment. "And I'm ready for a break."  
  
Irina nodded. "Probably a good idea." 


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

"I think I'll go check my e-mail," Tatiana said.

"Do you need to use my computer?" asked Jack.

"No, I can hook my cell phone up to my modem, bounce it off a few satellites...that way no one will notice any suspicious activity coming from here."  Tatiana left the kitchen.

The other three looked at each other a little awkwardly, and Sydney got the feeling that her parents wanted to be alone.  "I think I'll check my e-mail, too.  Can I use your computer, Dad?"

"Of course."  Sydney left, and Jack looked at Irina.  "Something wrong?"

"I'm not sure," Irina answered.  "Tatiana mentioned this 'Sergei' a couple of times.  It seems like she considered him at least a friend.  Maybe more."

"And he told her she was stabbed, which means he was cooperating with the Covenant."

"I'm sure Tatiana's come to the same conclusion."  Irina frowned.  "Maybe you should talk to her about it."

"Me?  I barely know her, Irina."

"But you know the subject matter quite well."

Jack stared at the floor for a moment, knowing she was right.  "All right, I'll talk to her."

***

Sydney walked into her father's office and sat down at the computer.  She was about to open a browser when the picture beside his desk caught her eye.  It was a family picture, taken for Christmas when she was five.  She picked it up and stared at it for a moment.  This picture had never been here before that she could recall, and yet it was familiar.  She was about to shrug it off when she suddenly remembered.

iSydney sat down at the computer to check her e-mail while she waited for her mother to finish a phone call in the next room.  Two pictures on the desk caught her eye.  She looked for a moment at the first, a picture of her at about five with both parents in festive outfits, then turned to the other, a picture of her mother, a little older than in the first picture, holding a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl of about three.

Sydney looked up when her mother entered.  "Mom, who's this?" she asked, showing the picture to her mother.

Irina took the photo and frowned.  "That was your sister Tatiana.  She died when she was four."  She ran her fingers over the glass.  "She would be almost twenty-three now."/i

Sydney tried to remember more, but there was nothing.  She stood and went to the kitchen.  Her parents looked at her in surprise when the door slammed open.  She stared at her mother.  "You knew...I was with you...working with you...what happened to me, Mom?  Why didn't you tell me?"

Jack stared at Irina in shock.  "Irina?"


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24  
  
Irina stared at her daughter for a moment. She'd been afraid of this. "Sydney, sit down. Let's talk."  
  
"No!" Sydney yelled. "I want to know why the hell you didn't tell me that we were in contact! Did you do this, make me forget? Are you responsible for what happened to me? I was just starting to think that maybe I could finally trust you!" She burst into tears and turned away, leaning against the doorframe.  
  
Irina started to get up, but Jack grabbed her shoulder. "Is this true? All the time we were working together, you knew?"  
  
Sydney must have remembered something to bring this on, Irina thought. She decided she would have to give Sydney at least a sketchy outline of what had happened to her, even though it meant breaking her promise. She turned to Jack first, since he wasn't currently hysterical. "No, Jack. I didn't find out she was alive until after you were in prison."  
  
Tatiana hurried in, drawn by Sydney's shouts. She glanced briefly at her parents, then turned to Sydney. "Sydney?" She put a hand on her sister's shoulder.  
  
Sydney turned to Tatiana, tears streaming down her face. "She knew. Mom knew. I saw her, talked to her."  
  
"What happened? Did you remember something?" Tatiana asked.  
  
Sydney nodded. "I was in her office, and there was a picture of you. I asked her about it. She told me about you. But that's all I can remember!" She turned to Irina. "Why, Mom?"  
  
"I didn't tell you because you asked me not to," Irina said.  
  
"What? I.I don't understand." Sydney stumbled over the words.  
  
"Sit down, Sydney."  
  
Sydney went to the table and sat down somewhat reluctantly. "I asked you.I knew that I was going to lose my memories?"  
  
"Yes. You chose to have your memories erased."  
  
"Why would I do that?"  
  
Irina frowned and considered for a moment. "Let me start at the beginning." Sydney nodded. "About a year after your apparent death, before I knew that your father was in prison, you and I were brought together by an old friend of mine. You told me what had happened to you." She took a deep breath. "The Covenant captured you that night, after you discovered Allison Doren. They." Irina broke off and swallowed hard. "They tried to brainwash you. They tortured you for nine months."  
  
Sydney's hand went to her mouth. She had expected something like that, but hadn't really wanted to have it confirmed. Tatiana took one of Sydney's hands and squeezed it. "They brainwashed me?"  
  
"They tried. You were able to resist while convincing them that they were successful." Irina glanced at Jack. "Most likely because of your father's use of Project Christmas when you were a child."  
  
"Dad, you brainwashed me so that I couldn't be brainwashed?" Sydney asked. Jack nodded.  
  
Everyone looked at Irina again. She continued, "After nine months the Covenant believed that you thought of yourself as a freelancer named Julia Thorne. They gave you some freedom, and you contacted Kendall."  
  
Sydney gasped. "Kendall knew? Who else?"  
  
Jack clenched his fists. "Kendall didn't bother to tell me about it."  
  
"Kendall told you that he would tell your father and Agent Vaughn that you were alive. He didn't tell your father, obviously, and presumably he kept Vaughn in the dark as well, but you didn't find that out until you met with me three months later. In the meantime, you were basically a double agent in the Covenant for the U.S. government."  
  
"And after I found out that Kendall had been lying to me?"  
  
"You kept meeting with Kendall, but you didn't tell him you were in contact with me. I helped you carry out your assignments."  
  
"What kind of assignments?" Sydney asked.  
  
"Most of the time I was in contact with you, you were working on finding a Rambaldi artifact. The Covenant wanted you to give it to them, and Kendall wanted you to give it to him. I helped you find it, and we destroyed it."  
  
Sydney raised her eyebrows in surprise. "You destroyed a Rambaldi artifact? What was it?"  
  
"I'm not going to tell you that."  
  
"Mom!"  
  
"Sydney, let me finish." Sydney frowned, but nodded. "We found the artifact about a month before you woke up in Hong Kong. Those two years were.very difficult for you, to say the least. And we couldn't think of a way to get you out and away from the Covenant." She paused. "You found a doctor who had been doing research on memories. He believed that he had found a way to erase someone's most recent memories, as far back as they chose. It was very risky, and I tried to talk you out of it, but you decided to go through with the procedure. Before you went, you made me promise that I wouldn't tell you anything about that time."  
  
"So why tell me now?"  
  
"You remembered something, so obviously the procedure didn't work perfectly. You're likely to remember more. Now you'll at least be able to place what you do remember."  
  
Sydney was silent for a moment. "Why didn't Kendall tell me he knew?"  
  
"I don't know. I suppose you must have asked him not to tell you as well."  
  
"I.I need some time to think about all this. I'll be in my room." 


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25  
  
When Sydney had gone, Tatiana looked at her parents, who were studiously not looking at each other. Her mother looked upset, and her father looked angry. "Um, I think I'll go.do something else," she said, and beat a hasty retreat. She went upstairs to the guest room where she'd put her things. On the way, she passed the closed door to Sydney's room, which she'd peeked into the night before.  
  
She left her door open, sat down, and finished checking the financial news. She was pretty sure that the dollar was set to fall against the Euro on Monday, so she put in orders to sell several million dollars' worth of American stocks and buy about the same amount in European stocks; she also transferred most of her banked money from dollars to Euros. She'd been siphoning money from her employers since she was ten and had found that she had a gift for both stealing without being caught and for investing; her "nest egg" was currently worth about two hundred million dollars.  
  
Tatiana heard Sydney's door open and looked up as her sister appeared in the doorway. Sydney's eyes were a bit red, but she looked reasonably composed. "Hi."  
  
"Hi. Come in." Sydney entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "Are you okay?" Tatiana asked.  
  
Sydney tucked her hair behind her ears nervously. "I don't know. I just.I want to believe Mom, but I just can't believe that I'd choose to erase my own memories and not want to know what happened to me. Especially if I was working with Mom last year and got to where I could trust her.shouldn't I have left myself some kind of message or something?"  
  
"If you'd had a message when you woke up in Hong Kong, would you have believed it? Or would it just have freaked you out?"  
  
Sydney frowned. "Freaked me out, probably."  
  
"Maybe you did leave yourself a message, but you left it somewhere where you wouldn't find it for a little while, until you'd had time to adjust. That's what I would have done."  
  
"Maybe, but I don't know where I would have left it. If I was working with Mom, the most logical thing would have been to give her something to give to me."  
  
"You didn't trust her two years ago, before your lost time, did you? You told me that you really didn't know what to think about her." Sydney nodded. Tatiana continued, "Again, if it were me, I would figure that the only way I would really trust that a message from myself was really genuine would be if I put it somewhere no one else knew about, and if I found it myself without anyone telling me where it is."  
  
"But that would mean taking a chance that I'd never find it." Tatiana just nodded. Sydney sighed. "I don't know where I'd put something like that. My apartment was destroyed."  
  
"You grew up in this house, right?" Tatiana asked, thinking that this would be about the only familiar place for Sydney to hide something.  
  
Sydney nodded, then her eyes widened. "I know!" she gasped. She stood and hurried out of the room and down the stairs; Tatiana followed. They burst into the kitchen, startling Jack and Irina; Sydney went right past them, down the stairs to the basement. The others followed, Jack and Irina looking very confused.  
  
Sydney reached the bottom of the basement stairs and went around to the side of the staircase, which was walled off. She bent down and ran her fingers along the baseboard until she found a slight depression, which she pressed. There was an audible click as a section of the wood paneling separated from the rest.  
  
"What the hell?" Jack muttered.  
  
Irina glanced at him. "The KGB put that in after we bought the house, before we moved in. I thought that it was too easily found, so I never kept anything in there."  
  
"I found it when I was eight," Sydney said as she opened the hidden door. "I was playing fetch with Buckley, and the ball hit that spot."  
  
"Buckley?" Tatiana asked.  
  
"My dog." She went into the hidden room and flipped the light switch. A moment later, she emerged, staring at the envelope in her hand.  
  
"What is it, Sydney?" Jack asked.  
  
"I think it's a message from myself. It's got my name on it, in my handwriting." 


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26  
  
After Sydney and Tatiana were out of the kitchen following Irina's revelations, Jack turned on Irina. "Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
"Sydney was very insistent that I not tell anyone, including you," Irina answered calmly.  
  
"Why wouldn't she want me to know?"  
  
Irina sighed. "I don't know, Jack. I don't know why she didn't want me to tell her something at least something about what happens. She started acting rather strange at the end."  
  
"How many people knew? That she was still herself, I mean?"  
  
"Besides me and Kendall, only one other person."  
  
Jack glared, and she stared back impassively. "And who exactly is that other person, Irina?" he finally asked.  
  
"He prefers to remain anonymous."  
  
Jack gave a frustrated sigh. "You're not going to tell me any more than you told Sydney, are you?"  
  
"Jack, I wouldn't tell Sydney about her own life. I'm not going to tell you."  
  
"I see." He frowned.  
  
Irina watched him for a moment. "Jack, if I'd been able to contact you to tell you she was alive, I would have." He didn't say anything. "Do you believe me?"  
  
"I don't know, Irina." He avoided looking at her. "We worked together, closely, for most of a year, and I thought maybe you were done with hidden agendas and keeping secrets. And now in the past few days I've found out that you didn't tell me you'd had another child, that you didn't tell me that you were with Sydney for a year.your reasons seem plausible, but I can't help wondering what else you're not telling me."  
  
She sighed. "Jack, I've been keeping secrets all my adult life. It's not that I want to be secretive with you, it's just.it's a habit. You're the same way." She smiled slightly. "We're both used to giving away as little as possible, and we're both justifiably paranoid. We can't just drop that when we're together." She reached out and took his hand. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Sydney. Honestly, I'm glad it's out, because it's been tormenting me that I couldn't tell either of you."  
  
"I want to know what happened to Sydney. In more detail than what you told her." Irina looked down at her lap. "Irina, I know you're protecting her. I know she probably had to do some things that she would hate herself for. But stop protecting me. I won't tell her what happened; she doesn't even have to know that I know. Irina, I need to know."  
  
Irina hesitated a moment, unsure. "All right, Jack. But it's not going to be easy to hear."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Tomorrow night, after Sydney leaves."  
  
As Jack nodded, the door to the kitchen burst open, and Sydney entered, followed closely by Tatiana. 


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27  
  
Sydney looked at the envelope in her hands for a long moment, then hurried up the two flights of stairs to her room. She sat down on her bed, opened the envelope, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.  
  
Sydney,  
  
It feels strange to be writing a letter to myself, but with luck, when you read this you won't remember writing it. Tomorrow, a doctor who believes he can erase the last two years of my memories will do a surgery on me, and then hopefully you can get your life back.  
  
I know you're curious about what happened to you, and I know you won't rest until you have answers, so I'll give you a very brief overview. I managed to convince the Covenant that they had successfully brainwashed me and became a double agent for the U.S. government. I met Mom a year ago, and she helped me deceive the Covenant. I just talked to her on the phone and made her promise not to tell you or anyone else, including Dad, anything about what happened to you. She's not very happy about it, but she promised, so don't ask her any questions. You should know, though, that she loves you and that you can trust her.  
  
Mom and I talked a lot about getting me out, but we never came up with anything that didn't require me to go into hiding for the rest of my life. I think this will work. If the Covenant thinks that their brainwashing backfired and you don't remember anything, they might leave you alone. I'm sure Mom will be watching out for you, just in case.  
  
I know this isn't much, but trust me, you don't want or need to know more. Enjoy your life.  
  
Sydney  
  
She folded the sheet and put it back in the envelope, blinking back tears. Her mother had been telling the truth, which was a huge relief. But she didn't know if she could take her own advice and not try to find out the whole truth about what had happened to her.  
  
Maybe she would remember enough to satisfy her, she thought. In the meantime, now that she knew her mother hadn't lied to her, she decided that she wouldn't pester her with questions. This weekend was the first opportunity she'd had to just spend time with her family in her adult life, and she wasn't going to waste it.  
  
***  
  
Jack, Irina, and Tatiana stood in the basement for a moment after Sydney left, and then climbed the stairs to the kitchen, where they looked at each other uncertainly for a moment. "Um, anybody else hungry?" Tatiana asked.  
  
"Now that you mention it, yes," Jack said. "We could order Chinese."  
  
"I don't mind cooking," Irina said. "I don't get to do it much anymore."  
  
Jack frowned. "The agents outside might get suspicious if I don't order something."  
  
"How much Chinese food do you eat?" asked Irina incredulously.  
  
"A lot," Jack replied. He went over to a neat stack of papers and extracted a menu, which he handed to Tatiana. He glanced at the ceiling. "Should we order for Sydney? I'm not really sure what she'd like..."  
  
"Szechwan chicken," Irina said with certainty. Jack raised an eyebrow at her. "Whatever city we were in, she almost always ordered Szechwan chicken last year when we got Chinese. But don't you think the people outside will wonder why you're ordering four meals?"  
  
Jack shrugged. "I usually order two or three at a time and save the leftovers. Do you want pork in hot bean sauce? They haven't changed the recipe at all in the past twenty years."  
  
Irina smiled. "That would be wonderful." She moved closer to Jack and whispered something in his ear; he turned a bit pink, smiled, and kissed her.  
  
Tatiana studied the menu, avoiding looking at them. "I'll have kung pao beef," she said, perhaps a bit louder than was necessary. Jack and Irina didn't even look up.  
  
The door to the kitchen opened, and Sydney stood on the threshold uncertainly when she saw her parents entwined in each other's arms. "Um...anybody hungry?"  
  
Tatiana turned away from Jack and Irina. "We were just talking about ordering Chinese," she said brightly. "Mom said you might like Szechwan chicken."  
  
"Yeah, that's my favorite, but how did she...oh."  
  
Irina and Jack finally noticed Sydney standing there and broke apart, although Jack's arms were still around Irina's waist. "How was your letter?" Irina asked.  
  
"It told me less than you did, actually. Mom, I'm sorry I got mad at you."  
  
"That's all right. I would have been mad at me too."  
  
Jack and Irina looked at each other again, and Tatiana cleared her throat. "Could we get the food ordered before you two go at it again?"  
  
Jack looked like he was about to say something, but just shook his head and picked up the phone. 


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28  
  
Sydney and Tatiana had gone back to the Rambaldi manuscript while waiting for the food; as they deciphered it, they both tried to ignore the noises coming from their parents' bedroom.  
  
The doorbell rang, and Sydney got up to answer it, knowing that Tatiana couldn't be seen. She came back in a moment with the Chinese food. "Should we start without them?"  
  
"Of course," Tatiana answered. "It could be hours before they come back down."  
  
Sydney nodded, and they dug in.  
  
Jack and Irina came down a few minutes later, and their daughters looked up in surprise. "We thought you'd be up there all day," Tatiana said with a grin.  
  
"We smelled the food," Jack said as he and Irina found their orders.  
  
Irina noticed the new additions to the Rambaldi notes. "Find anything interesting?"  
  
"Yeah, Rambaldi says, 'My descendants shall be incorrigible sex fiends,'" Tatiana said with a grin.  
  
Sydney rolled her eyes, Jack's ears turned a bit pink, and Irina just chuckled. "Be nice. It's been awhile for both of us," she said.  
  
"TMI, Mom," Sydney groaned.  
  
"TMI?" Irina asked.  
  
"Too much information," Sydney and Tatiana said together.  
  
Irina pointed at Tatiana with her chopsticks. "She was the one that brought the subject up."  
  
"Why don't we change the subject?" Jack said. "Let's talk about chess. Tatiana, do you play?"  
  
Tatiana shrugged. "I can."  
  
"Want to play a game after we eat?" It was a good way to get Tatiana alone to talk to her about Sergei, Jack thought. He'd go easy on her so she didn't lose too fast.  
  
"Sure." Tatiana turned back to her food. She hoped her father didn't mind losing.  
  
***  
  
Arvin Sloane answered his private phone line. "Yes?"  
  
"This is Kresniev, sir. I have good news and bad news."  
  
"Let's have the good news first."  
  
"We've located Irina Derevko's private plane." That was good news, Sloane thought, until Kresniev continued, "It's been in the hangar at a small airport just outside Los Angeles since Friday afternoon." Sloane cursed silently. "Sir, the plane could be rigged to explode upon takeoff if you like."  
  
Arvin gripped his glass tightly, resisting the urge to throw it across the room. Why the hell couldn't he get good help? He missed the good old days when Jack Bristow had been his right-hand man; Jack could actually get a job done right. "Mr. Kresniev," he said in a low-pitched, deceptively calm voice, "remind me of the conditions I set down for the death of Irina Derevko after that debacle in Prague two months ago."  
  
"The body must be clearly identifiable, there must be little or no collateral damage, and you want to view the body personally," Kresniev recited. "But sir, this is a wonderful opportunity...it wouldn't be much trouble to plant a bomb..."  
  
"Mr. Kresniev. First, we wouldn't want to make assumptions again. Second, if you can plant a bomb, you can plant a tracking device. And third, there is a distinct possibility that Irina will meet up with one or both of her daughters while she is in Los Angeles; it would be disastrous if you were to blow up one of them. Plant a tracking device, watch the plane by satellite, but take out Derevko only if you have a clear and certain opportunity. Is that understood?"  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"Good. You said you had other news?"  
  
"Robert Lindsey is dead. He was found in his hotel room with his Covenant contact; they'd both had their throats cut. The U.S. government is investigating Lindsey as a traitor."  
  
"Who killed him?"  
  
"No one seems to know that, sir. Unfortunately, with our U.S. information source gone, I was unable to get more specifics on his murder."  
  
"I see. I believe it's time to activate our backup contact."  
  
"Immediately?"  
  
"Yes. Get information on Lindsey's murder, and have our new contact watch out for Tatiana, but nothing else. We want the CIA to believe that the leak has been plugged."  
  
"Yes, Mr. Sloane." 


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29  
  
After they finished eating, Irina and Sydney got to work on the Rambaldi manuscript again; Jack and Tatiana moved into the living room, where Jack got out the chessboard. "White or black?" he asked.  
  
"Black," Tatiana said decisively, sitting down and setting up the black pieces. Jack was a bit surprised—he would have guessed her to be the type that wanted to go first—but sat down opposite her and set up his own pieces. When the board was ready, Jack made his move silently, not sure how to broach the subject of Sergei. "Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Tatiana asked, surprising Jack by giving him a perfect opening.  
  
"Yes, there was," Jack said, studiously looking at the board rather than Tatiana. He considered his words for a moment. "You've mentioned 'Sergei' a couple of times, and your mother wanted me to see if you wanted to talk about him, since..."  
  
"Since he lied to me and apparently was working for the Covenant?" Tatiana finished calmly. Jack looked up to see that she was now looking down at the board. She looked up and fixed him with a direct gaze. "I figured out years ago that he was probably working with Kresniev. It was all too perfect: the way we were able to meet, the way we always made plans to leave but never actually did anything about them." She shrugged and returned her attention to the board. "He was only a child, just like the rest of us. Despite the lying, I'd still call him a...friend."  
  
Jack didn't miss the minute hesitation before "friend"; he wondered what it meant, but decided not to say anything. "He's dead now?" he asked instead.  
  
Tatiana nodded. She was quiet for a moment. "One thing I wouldn't have forgiven him for was standing by while Kresniev killed Mikel and Nadia, but Sergei was the first to die, and his death is the only one I'm not sure of. It could have actually been an accident." She looked down at the board and moved her queen.  
  
Jack hadn't been paying that much attention to the game; now that the conversation had stalled, he studied the board closely and was surprised to see that Tatiana had him cornered. Knowing it was futile, he took her queen.  
  
As he expected, she moved her bishop into position. "Checkmate," she said.  
  
"Nice game," he said, moving his pieces back to their starting positions. "Want a rematch?"  
  
"Only if you promise to play like you mean it this time," Tatiana said with a slight grin, resetting her own pieces.  
  
Jack gave her a small smile in return. "I'll pay attention to the board this time." He made his first move.  
  
***  
  
Irina and Sydney worked on the Rambaldi manuscript in silence for awhile, Irina glancing up at Sydney every now and then. She seemed to have regained her spirits after the earlier revelations, and Irina was glad. She still didn't like being back on such fragile ground with her daughter after they'd developed such a good relationship, but at least Sydney didn't seem to be mad at her anymore.  
  
After about half an hour, Sydney spoke. "I shouldn't know how to do this," she said. "Did you teach me?"  
  
Irina looked up from the passage she'd become engrossed in. "I did, but you caught on quickly." She'd been thinking that Sydney must have retained the skills she'd picked up during her lost time.  
  
Sydney looked down at the manuscript for a moment, frowning. "Mom, I...I hate not knowing...I know I thought it was better, before, but...Mom, I killed someone. Just...slit his throat. I wish...if I knew I had a reason...can you at least tell me why I killed Andrian Lazarey?"  
  
Well, that was something she probably should tell Sydney, Irina thought. "You didn't kill him," she said simply.  
  
Sydney stared at her for a moment in shock. "I didn't?"  
  
"The Covenant ordered you to assassinate him. Instead, you went to him the night before you were supposed to do the job, and the two of you worked out a plan to fake his death. He was the one that brought you to me."  
  
"You know him? How did he know I was your daughter?"  
  
"Yes, I've known Andrian for many years," Irina answered. She paused for a moment, then decided to continue. "He used to be with the KGB as well. After I was extracted when you were a child, he was able to get pictures of you from time to time."  
  
Sydney frowned. "I'd wondered if you were watching me while I was growing up."  
  
Irina smiled. "As much as I could, Sydney."  
  
"So...you and Lazarey must have known each other pretty well," said Sydney, looking suddenly uncomfortable. "Were you...lovers?"  
  
Irina couldn't help letting out a short, sharp laugh. "God, no. Sydney, Andrian Lazarey is my half brother." 


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30  
  
Sydney stared at Irina for a moment. "Your half-brother?" she echoed. Irina nodded. "Wait, does that mean that Sark is my cousin?"  
  
"Yes, he is."  
  
"Do we have any more relatives that I should know about?"  
  
Irina smiled. "I have two sisters, Elena and Katya."  
  
"Are they in...um, the intelligence business, too?"  
  
"They were both in the KGB, but they're retired now."  
  
Sydney frowned. "I don't suppose I'll ever get a chance to meet them." Irina looked away from Sydney, a pensive look on her face. "I have met them, haven't I?"  
  
Irina smiled slightly. "I suppose it would be more accurate to say that they've met you."  
  
Sydney had a sudden flash of eating a meal across the table from her mother and a woman with short, dark hair. The woman was talking while gesturing with her fork, but Sydney couldn't remember what she'd been talking about. "Does one of your sisters have really short hair?" she asked.  
  
"Katya does," Irina said. "You remember her?"  
  
"Just...not much, just her face really." Sydney suddenly felt more frustrated than she had since she'd first returned to LA. "These bits and pieces are worse than nothing at all!" She looked at her mother, who was looking at her worriedly. She considered for a moment. "But I suppose you just telling me what happened wouldn't really help either."  
  
Irina reached out and put a hand on Sydney's shoulder. "I think you're right. But you've had two memories now, you're almost certain to recover more. If you remember something else, and you have specific questions, I'll answer them if I can, all right?"  
  
"Okay," Sydney said with a small smile. "Can you tell me how to contact you, in case I have questions after you leave?"  
  
Irina nodded. "As a matter of fact, I brought scrambled cell phones for you and your father."  
  
Sydney smiled. She had never been able to have the simple luxury of picking up the phone and calling her mother—that she could remember, anyway—and the change would be nice. Maybe she could even pretend from time to time that she was actually part of a normal family. "That would be nice." There was silence for a moment. "Well, I suppose we should get back to the manuscript." They returned their attention to Rambaldi.  
  
***  
  
Irina stared at the manuscript, seeing confirmation of what she'd always suspected. It had been the drawing of her, Jack, and Sloane that had gotten her interested in Rambaldi in the first place, but as she'd learned more about him she'd begun to wonder if Rambaldi had written about this particular topic; it was that curiosity that had turned Rambaldi into an obsession. If she'd only known it had been in this manuscript all the time, she'd have found a way to return for it sooner.  
  
Trying not to show anything that would make Sydney curious, Irina slowly turned the pages, deciphering as much as she could in her head, until she reached the end of that section. She knew she would eventually need to share this with both her daughters and with Jack, but she wanted time to become familiar with it herself first.  
  
A few minutes after she started on the next section, Tatiana and Jack came in. Irina and Sydney turned to see that Jack looked a bit annoyed, while Tatiana was looking rather smug. "Did you have a nice game?" Irina asked.  
  
"Ten games," Tatiana said brightly before going over to the refrigerator and pouring herself a glass of milk.  
  
"Who won?" Sydney asked curiously. Irina smirked; she had a pretty good idea who had won, and she knew how much Jack hated to lose. He would be irritated for hours—and she knew just how to turn that irritation into something quite enjoyable.  
  
"She won eight out of ten," Jack said, looking disgruntled. "How's the manuscript coming?"  
  
"Not bad," Irina said. "Still a lot of work to do, of course. I'll have to take it with me—it will probably take a few weeks to finish deciphering it." Jack nodded.  
  
Sydney pushed her chair back. "I need a break." She looked over at Tatiana. "I think there are some old photo albums in the attic. Want to look at them?"  
  
Tatiana smiled. "I would love to." They headed up to the attic. 


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31  
  
Jack sat down next to Irina and looked at her with an odd expression on his face. "What is it?" Irina asked.  
  
"Just thinking," Jack said. "A few years ago, I believed you were dead, I didn't have a very good relationship with Sydney, my life was...not good. And now you're here, and Sydney and I are getting along, and suddenly I have another daughter...it's all a bit much, I guess."  
  
Irina nodded. "I keep looking at Tatiana and just being amazed. She actually seems to have turned out decently somehow, despite her upbringing." She paused for a moment, considering. "Jack...I never said how sorry I am. For everything I've done. And the worst part is that if I had it to do over again, I think I'd make the same decisions." She looked down at her hands, then back up at Jack with tears in her eyes. "Can you ever forgive me?"  
  
Jack pulled her into an embrace. "I already have." He held her silently for a long moment. "The last year—when I was in solitary—I had a lot of time to think, naturally. And I thought about what I would have done if I'd been in your position. The truth is I think I'd have done the exact same things—with one exception." She looked at him curiously. "I wouldn't have come back. When you turned yourself in to the CIA—there have to have been other ways to get to the Rambaldi artifacts. I could only conclude that your main reason was to get close to Sydney again—and to me." She nodded. "If I'd been in your position, if I'd left you and Sydney, I wouldn't have come back. I'd have been too afraid that you'd hate me, that you could never forgive me."  
  
Irina was silent for a moment. "I was afraid of that, Jack. But I needed to see you—both of you—with my own eyes, find out how much damage I'd caused...and just maybe have the chance to explain. I never dreamed it would work out this well."  
  
They were quiet for a moment. "Tell me about Tatiana," Jack said. "Your pregnancy, her birth, all of that."  
  
Irina took a deep breath. She really preferred not to think about that time in her life, but Jack deserved to know. She fixed her eyes on a point over Jack's shoulder and began to speak. "When I was extracted, I suspected that I might be pregnant, but I didn't know for sure. I was on birth control; I shouldn't have gotten pregnant."  
  
"Just like with Sydney?" When Sydney had been conceived, he and "Laura" had had nebulous plans to have children "someday", but neither had been ready yet; he'd known she'd been on birth control. But despite not missing a single pill, she'd somehow conceived.  
  
Irina nodded. "By the time I got back to Moscow and had a medical exam, a week later, I was sure that I was pregnant. I didn't tell anyone, but they did a blood test, and they must have tested for pregnancy." She paused and looked down at her hands. "I've wondered for years why they let me keep her, why they didn't just order an abortion. I suppose they must have wanted her for Medea even then." She glanced up at Jack, who was watching her silently, his expression encouraging. She looked away again. "They sent me to prison, accused me of no longer being loyal to my country. It wasn't true when I went in, but it was true when I came out."  
  
Jack leaned forward. "Irina, what did they do to you?"  
  
"I don't want to talk about it," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She blinked rapidly a few times, then turned to Jack. "Suffice it to say that they wanted me to have a healthy baby; physically they treated me quite well." She paused, then remembered that he'd wanted to hear about Tatiana's birth. "When I went into labor...the whole time, I'd been certain that they'd take the baby as soon as I gave birth. So I tried to make as little noise as possible, to not call attention to myself. I was alone when she was born. They found out the next day, took us to the infirmary, took her into a different room. I thought I'd never see her again." Tears began to spill down her cheeks. She remembered clearly the awful wrench in her heart when the nurse had taken her daughter from her arms. It had taken all her strength not to fight; she'd decided before that she wouldn't, afraid the baby would be hurt. "When they gave her back..." Her shoulders began to shake. "It was the only time I ever cried in front of them."  
  
She saw understanding in Jack's eyes; he reached out and ran a thumb over her cheek, brushing away the tears. "How long did they keep her?"  
  
"Not long—a few hours."  
  
She wasn't exactly sure how long it had been; after the doctor had examined her, he'd sedated her, and she'd awakened back in her cell. About an hour after that, Gerard Cuvee had appeared carrying her daughter. He hadn't said a word as he'd placed the baby in her arms, or as the guard that followed placed a pile of baby clothes and blankets on her bed. Only after the guard was gone had he spoken. "You will repay me later," he'd said. She'd merely nodded, knowing that he could take her child easily if she didn't do exactly as he wanted. She'd paid the price for keeping her child later, but she wouldn't think about that.  
  
Jack leaned forward and kissed her gently, making her forget all of it momentarily. Her family was together now, and really, that was all that mattered. 


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32  
  
Sydney and Tatiana came down from the attic with an armful of photo albums; Jack and Irina quickly cleared away Rambaldi to make room. The four of them spent a pleasant couple of hours looking at pictures and telling stories from both Sydney's and Tatiana's childhoods. No one was really in the mood for more Rambaldi after that, so they headed into the living room and found a movie to watch on television. After a couple of movies, complete with copious amounts of snack foods, they all agreed that it was time for bed.  
  
A little while later, Irina emerged from the shower to find Jack in bed, looking through one of the photo albums again. She climbed in bed beside him and saw that it was the album that covered the first few weeks of Sydney's life. "You looked so happy," Jack said.  
  
"I was," Irina answered simply. She'd spent most of her life hoping that her sister had been wrong, that she'd never have children; she was convinced that she'd be a bad mother. And the truth was that she was far from the world's best mother—but when Sydney was born, it had been impossible not to fall in love with the tiny little person she had made—that she and Jack had made together.  
  
"Even knowing you would have to leave her one day?"  
  
"I was young, still too idealistic. At that point, I was convinced I could find some way to stay forever." She chuckled. "Later, when I finally accepted that I had to leave, I was still glad that I'd had her. She was...something real between us. Everything else was steeped in lies, stained with an alias. But Sydney...I really was her mother. The lies didn't touch her."  
  
Jack put his arm around her shoulders and leaned his head against her. "I wish I'd known...realized...for a long time, I didn't think you loved her, thought that was a lie too."  
  
"I wish you could have known the truth, Jack. I thought about telling you everything, especially at the end when extraction was imminent. But I couldn't see any way to do that and ensure that you and Sydney would be safe from the KGB. And...well, I didn't think you'd react well."  
  
"I've thought about that," Jack said. "I'd like to think that I would have taken the news calmly, been understanding...but I probably wouldn't have. Even if I had come to the conclusion that I loved you anyway, it would probably have been after I turned you in to the CIA."  
  
Irina nodded. "That's pretty much what I thought." She yawned. "So, should we go to sleep, or should we make some noise and annoy the girls?"  
  
Jack slipped a hand under her tank top. "What do you think? We missed the chance to embarrass them when they were teenagers; we've got a lot of lost time to make up."  
  
"Mmm. I agree," Irina said. She captured his mouth in a deep kiss.  
  
***  
  
iShe sat in a chair, hands and feet shackled to the legs. A shadowy figure entered and unlocked the chains binding her right wrist. She sat immobile, paralyzed, as her right arm was strapped to a steel table with straps across her forearm and hand. As always, she knew what was going to happen; as always, she was helpless to stop it.  
  
A voice spoke from behind her. "I am sorry, my dear. I wish this weren't necessary." She started, recognizing the voice that until now had always been a mystery.  
  
The faceless figure beside her cleaned her wrist with alcohol, used a marker to draw a line across her wrist, and then raised a meat cleaver, sharpened and gleaming. She couldn't take her eyes off it as it hung poised in the air for an impossibly long moment. Then it came down, hitting flesh and bone with a sickening thud, and her world exploded./i  
  
Irina sat up in bed, screaming. 


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33  
  
Irina's scream startled Jack out of sleep. He turned on the lamp to find her sitting up, white and shaking. "Irina? Are you all right?" She'd periodically had nightmares during their marriage, but she hadn't had one while she was with him during the year they'd been searching for Sydney; he thought she'd gotten over them.  
  
"It's Sloane, Jack," she whispered.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"The hand dream." She was still staring into space, wide-eyed; he put his hands on her shoulders. He remembered 'the hand dream'—she'd told him while they were married that she'd had a recurring dream since childhood in which someone cut off her hand with a meat cleaver. It always took her a while to calm down.  
  
The bedroom door burst open to reveal Sydney and Tatiana, both with guns drawn. They froze on the threshold, taking in the lack of intruders and Irina's stricken expression. "Is everything okay?" Sydney asked,  
  
Jack suddenly decided he was very glad he and Irina had put pajamas on before going to sleep. "It's fine. Your mother just had a bad dream," he said when he saw that Irina wasn't going to answer.  
  
"Um...is she okay? She looks kind of out of it," Tatiana said.  
  
Irina blinked and shook her head a bit. "I'm fine," she said. "Just a bad dream."  
  
When neither of them moved for a moment, Jack cleared his throat. "We'd appreciate it if you'd knock next time."  
  
"We thought...Mom screamed..." Sydney sputtered.  
  
"Okay, going back to bed now," Tatiana said. She grabbed Sydney by the arm and pulled her out of the room.  
  
Jack turned to Irina. "You're still having that dream?"  
  
Irina nodded. "It was Sloane, Jack. He's the one that ordered my hand cut off."  
  
Jack took her hand and stroked her palm. "It's just a dream, Irina. Your mind probably put Sloane in there because of his picture in that Rambaldi book."  
  
Irina looked pensive. "Maybe," she said. She kissed him. "Let's go back to sleep now, okay?"  
  
Jack frowned, sensing that there was more to it. But she obviously didn't want to talk about it. "All right." He reached over and turned out the light; she curled into him and went back to sleep.  
  
***  
  
Irina jerked out of sleep suddenly and opened her eyes to see morning sunlight slanting through the room. "Morning," Jack said from beside her, and leaned in to kiss her.  
  
She smiled. "Morning."  
  
"I love waking up next to you," Jack said. Her smile disappeared, but he was kissing her neck and didn't see. "Hey, remember how I used to go out and get donuts for us all on Sunday morning? Maybe I should go do that..." Irina sat up abruptly and got out of bed. "Irina?"  
  
Irina dug in her bag and started pulling on clothes. "We've got to get out of here."  
  
***  
  
Tatiana woke up with a start and sat up, shaking her head to clear her dream away. Yawning, she made her way to the bathroom. The door was open, and she looked in to see that Sydney was just finishing brushing her teeth. "Hi!" Sydney said brightly. "Sleep well?"  
  
"Um, yeah," Tatiana said, frowning.  
  
"Hmm...I remember on Sundays when I was little Dad used to go get us donuts. I wonder if we could convince him to go?"  
  
Tatiana paled. "Sydney...Mom and I, we have to leave. Now." 


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34  
  
Lauren Reed tapped her fingers on her thigh under the table. It was Sunday morning; she'd much rather be home relaxing than here at Joint Task Force headquarters sifting through the utter lack of clues in the continued search for Robert Lindsey's murderer. But Ralph Campbell was her direct superior at the NSC, and he wasn't giving her a choice. Nothing much was happening at the moment; they were waiting for reports from all the airports in the Los Angeles area. Reports of what, she didn't know; they still had no idea who they were looking for.  
  
Lauren's cell phone rang, and she answered. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" a male voice said in accented Russian.  
  
Lauren went completely still for a moment, but then her programming clicked into place. "I'm sorry, Mum, I can't talk now. I'm at work," she said quite calmly.  
  
"Meet me at the Westin Bonaventure hotel, room 447, as soon as possible," the man said.  
  
"Sure, I'll call you as soon as I can. Bye." As the brainwashed part of her that was in control calmly hung up and apologized to Campbell for the interruption, that tiny piece of herself that remembered what had been done to her pictured Kresniev, whose voice she'd recognized, and thought of how much she hated him.  
  
A young FBI agent entered the room, looking nervous. "You've got something?" Campbell prodded when the man didn't immediately speak.  
  
"Well, it can't be Lindsey's murderer, because she was arriving after the murder—but Irina Derevko was spotted on a security camera at Ontario on Friday afternoon.  
  
"What the hell?" Jack said, confused. "Irina, what's going on?"  
  
"We've got about half an hour to get out of the house and lose the tail. I'll explain in the car. You'd better get dressed," she said as she finished dressing, then disappeared into the bathroom.  
  
There was a knock at the door. "Come in," Jack called distractedly.  
  
Sydney, wearing her pajamas, opened the door. "Dad...um, Tatiana's acting really weird, but she says she and Mom have to leave..."  
  
"She did?" Irina said, coming back out of the bathroom with a small bag containing her toiletries. "I wondered if she might..." She shook her head, then leaned forward and gave Jack a kiss. "Jack, please get dressed. I promise I'll explain, but we've got to move." She picked up her bag and went into the hall, shutting the door behind her. "Tatiana?" she called.  
  
Tatiana came out of the guest room, also dressed and packed. "Mama, we have to go..." She stopped and looked confused when she saw her mother quite ready.  
  
"I know," Irina said with a small smile. "Do you have the dreams, too?"  
  
"You have them? I thought I was the only one," said Tatiana.  
  
"What dreams?" Sydney looked thoroughly bewildered.  
  
Irina didn't answer; she was digging in her pack. She pulled out a cell phone. "Here. This line is encrypted and completely secure; my number and the number for the phone I'm giving your father are already in the menu. I'll have Tatiana text message you once I get her a phone." She pulled Sydney into a hug and kissed her forehead. "I love you, sweetheart."  
  
Sydney's smile was tinged with confusion, but she hugged her mother back, then looked over at Tatiana as they broke apart. "I wish you didn't have to leave so soon..." She and Tatiana looked at each other awkwardly for a moment; then Sydney held out her arms and Tatiana stepped in for a hug.  
  
Jack came out of the master bedroom. "Ok, I guess I'm ready...where am I taking you?"  
  
Irina shrugged. "Anywhere's fine, just as long as we evade your watchers."  
  
Jack nodded. "Sydney, I'll bring back some donuts," he said. She nodded and watched as her family went down the stairs. 


	35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35  
  
Before the rest reached the bottom of the stairs, Sydney had made a decision. She ran back into her room and used her considerable skills in quick clothes changes to get dressed in under 30 seconds, then ran down the stairs and burst into the garage, where Tatiana and Irina were throwing their bags in the trunk. "Wait, if there's danger, shouldn't I come too?"  
  
"You're not in danger, just the non-law abiding members of the family," Irina said. "But I suppose it couldn't hurt."  
  
"Other than making the floor a bit cramped," Tatiana said with a wry grin.  
  
"If my old bones can handle it, I'm sure you can manage," said Irina. With that, she got into the back seat and neatly folded herself up on the floor; Tatiana followed suit on the other side.  
  
With Sydney in the passenger seat, Jack backed out of the garage and the driveway. "So what's the big deal with suddenly having to leave?"  
  
"What are these dreams that you two were talking about?" Sydney added.  
  
"Prophetic dreams," Tatiana said, and Sydney caught herself just before giving them away to the tail by turning to look back. "Ever since I was little, I've had dreams that come true. Usually I have them at least twice before they happen, though; this is the only time I can remember that I've only had a dream once before it came true."  
  
"It did happen twice," Irina said. "I had one dream, you had the other."  
  
"Okay, that's just weird," said Sydney. "So what, you two are psychic now?"  
  
"Well, if that's what you want to call it, I suppose we've always been psychic," said Irina. "The problem is, I have no control over it."  
  
"Me either," chimed in Tatiana. "But the dreams have saved my life more than once."  
  
"Mine, too," Irina said.  
  
"So why don't I have these dreams?" Sydney asked.  
  
Irina took a deep breath. "I think you tell the future in a different way, as does your father. And I believe Sloane can predict future events to some extent as well."  
  
"Wait. I've never seen the future," Jack said.  
  
"I don't believe it's conscious on your part, Jack," Irina responded. "I think you sometimes just know what's coming, a few minutes or a few hours ahead. I can't tell you how many times during our marriage you'd start toward the phone just before it rang, and you didn't know you were doing it. And it explains the 'luck' you're known for in the CIA. Sydney, I think that's what you've got, too."  
  
Sydney thought for a moment and remembered numerous instances when something had happened that should have surprised her but somehow hadn't—anticipating her opponent's next move in a fight with frightening accuracy, or looking at her phone and waiting for it to ring. She had never thought anything of it—it had just been normal—but now that she thought about it she realized how strange it was. "But what makes you think Sloane can do it, too?"  
  
"The Rambaldi manuscript," Irina said. "The four of us and Sloane aren't the only descendents of Rambaldi. I have two full sisters and cousins on both sides; your father has two siblings...I think we're the ones among Rambaldi's descendents who inherited his ability to foretell the future. My father had dreams just like mine. And I told you before that my sister Tatiana predicted that I would have two children; her ability to know what was going to happen was actually rather frightening in the last months before she died."  
  
"I've lost the tail; you two can get up now," Jack said, and Irina and Tatiana immediately unfolded themselves to sit on the seat. "You really believe that these dreams you have are about the future?"  
  
"I've seen my dreams come true far too many times to doubt it, Jack," Irina said.  
  
"But aren't you supposed to not be able to change the future once you've seen it?" Sydney asked, remembering the Greek myths she'd read that included prophecies.  
  
"What my father taught me was that the future one sees can be changed, but only by proceeding very carefully. For example...Jack, you remember that horrible cross-country drive when we moved here from Virginia, don't you?"  
  
"How could I forget?" Jack said with a frown. Forty hours of driving over four days with a cranky two-year-old, in the middle of August...it hadn't exactly been a pleasant experience.  
  
"Remember getting stuck in traffic for two hours near Oklahoma City after that truck overturned?"  
  
"I'd rather not." The car hadn't been air conditioned, which was the norm in 1977, and so they'd sat for two hours, barely moving in 100 degree heat with Sydney screaming her head off for most of it, getting dirty looks from the other cars.  
  
"Hey, I've never heard about this trip," Sydney said.  
  
"For a reason. It was awful," Irina said. "Anyway, I'd had a dream about that truck overturning several times before we left. And in the dream, we were part of the accident."  
  
"No wonder you were so cranky," Jack said. "But why didn't you just convince me to take another route?"  
  
"Because the dream didn't tell me what highway we were on," said Irina. "That's the thing. If I'd told you to take another route without knowing where the accident would be, for all I know I could have put us right in its path. I couldn't do anything until after the sequence of events in the dream started."  
  
"At the rest stop," Jack said, understanding. They'd been about to leave a rest stop about half an hour before the accident when Irina had spilled the contents of her purse all over the pavement; it had taken ten minutes to clean it up.  
  
Irina nodded. "The dream started with me putting Sydney in her car seat and then getting in the car, so I knew that the way to avoid the accident was to do something to delay us after she was buckled in."  
  
"And to think I was annoyed with you for months about you spilling your purse," Jack said with a hint of a grin. "I never said anything, of course—but I figured if you hadn't done that we would have been in front of the accident."  
  
"Oh, I knew exactly what you were thinking," said Irina. "I'd already had years of practice at that point staying quiet about those things."  
  
There was quiet for a moment, and then Jack frowned. "Irina...the hand dream...you don't think..."  
  
"I believe it's going to happen one day, Jack," Irina said softly. "And there's nothing I can do to stop it." 


	36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36  
  
"What hand dream?" Sydney asked, confused. There was no response for a moment.  
  
Tatiana broke the silence. "I'm hungry. Anybody want to go have breakfast? It would give you two a cover. I know the perfect place." Everyone agreed that that sounded like a good idea, so Tatiana directed Jack to a small Russian restaurant. As they traveled, she said, "The owner is extremely friendly, and won't let anyone who speaks Russian leave without hearing their life story. So I made something up which turned out to be amazingly similar to the truth. I told him my mother had immigrated to the US as a teenager, married an American, and had two daughters. When the Soviet Union fell in '91, we all moved to Russia, but my sister didn't like it there, came back to LA for school, and stayed. I stop by here every time I'm in LA and tell him I'm visiting my sister; he'll be so excited to meet the whole family."  
  
Sydney blinked. "That's weird."  
  
Tatiana shrugged. "Maybe I'm psychic," she said with a grin, prompting chuckles. "Anyway, my name's Alexandra, and my previously hypothetical sister's name is Regina."  
  
They arrived at the restaurant; as soon as they entered, a smiling man approached. "Alexandra! You've finally brought your family!" he said in Russian.  
  
Tatiana smiled. "Yes, Nicolae, my parents decided to come over for a visit."  
  
"Ah, so nice to meet you all," Nicolae said. He moved to shake Sydney's hand. "You must be Regina; I've been telling your sister for years that she should bring you in." Then he turned to Jack and Irina. "And you two have produced two lovely daughters. And hopefully one day beautiful grandchildren?" He turned back to Tatiana. "Speaking of which, where is that charming husband of yours?"  
  
Tatiana looked very uncomfortable, while the rest of them tried not to appear too shocked. "We're...well, we're not together any more."  
  
"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that," Nicolae said, shaking his head. "The two of you seemed so in love. Well. Would you like your usual booth?" Tatiana nodded, and Nicolae showed them to a booth in the back, right by the kitchen door and hidden from the entrance. He handed them menus. "I'm sure Alexandra can make some excellent recommendations, so I won't bother. Just wave when you're ready." He disappeared into the kitchen.  
  
"Your husband?" Sydney asked in English.  
  
Tatiana shrugged. "My partner, Sergei. We used to come here together; it was easiest to just say we were married. The syrniki are fabulous, and so is the simenukha. They have good bliny here, too," she said, quickly changing the subject.  
  
"Um...I usually eat at McDonald's when I'm in Russia," Sydney said, looking a bit embarrassed.  
  
Irina smiled. "Syrniki are like fried cottage cheese balls, simenukha is buckwheat porridge with mushrooms and onions, and bliny are like pancakes."  
  
"I'm not too into mushrooms, but I guess I could try the syrniki," Sydney said.  
  
Nicolae soon reappeared and took their orders. When he was gone, Irina pulled out her cell phone. "I'll just arrange to have us picked up here," she said. She placed the call and gave the address of the restaurant. "He'll be here in forty-five minutes."  
  
Campbell frowned at the news that Irina Derevko had been sighted. "I wonder if she might be here to pay some people a little visit." He turned to Lauren. "The NSC has an infrared satellite over LA right now; go find out how many people are in Jack Bristow's house. I'll get in touch with the surveillance teams watching the Bristows and see what they're doing right now."  
  
Ten minutes later, they met in the conference room again; Lauren reported that Agent Bristow's house was empty.  
  
"Apparently Sydney Bristow stayed at her father's house last night," Campbell said, "and they drove off in Jack Bristow's car about half an hour ago and lost their tail. They're up to something."  
  
"Maybe they just went out to breakfast," Lauren suggested. "They are father and daughter; it makes sense that they'd spend some time together."  
  
"Yes, and Irina Derevko and Sydney Bristow are mother and daughter. I think I'd better give one of the Bristows a call and see what they're up to." 


	37. Chapter 37

Chapter 37  
  
"You're right, these are really good," Sydney said after trying her syrniki.  
  
"Told you," Tatiana said as she enjoyed her own syrniki.  
  
"These really are very good," Irina said. "You should all try my sister Elena's syrniki sometime. She's a fabulous cook."  
  
Jack's phone rang, and everyone grew silent while he answered it. "Bristow." He listened for a moment. "Agent Campbell, is there an emergency?" After a brief pause, he said, "Well, if there's no emergency, surely it can wait until tomorrow, since tomorrow is a work day and today is not." He waited again. "I didn't realize my leisure activities were of such vast importance to the United States government. I'm having breakfast with my daughter, if you must know. And my food is getting cold. So unless you have something important to say...No? Goodbye, then." He sighed as he hung up the phone. "I think Campbell may suspect something, and they had more than enough time during that call to determine our location."  
  
"Damn," Irina said. "Well, we'd better go, then."  
  
Tatiana waved to Nicolae, and he came over. "Can we get two boxes, please? And the check for our two meals," she said, gesturing to Irina.  
  
"Ah, leaving so soon? And just the two of you?" Nicolae looked perplexed.  
  
"Alexandra and I are going to go visit an old friend while Regina catches up with her father," Irina said smoothly. "Our visit is far too short, I'm afraid."  
  
"Of course. I'll be right back."  
  
Sydney raised her eyebrows. "The food is that good?"  
  
"Well, it is," Tatiana said. "Plus I thought you'd rather not have to explain why the two of you ordered four meals."  
  
Nicolae was back in record time with two boxes; Tatiana handed him a pair of twenties. "Could you clear our glasses and dishes away, too? And if any friends of Papa's should stop by, you shouldn't need to talk to them."  
  
Nicolae nodded, a knowing look in his eye. "I had my suspicions about you, my dear. But I see it's a family business, so you will take care of each other, yes? In any case, you can count on my discretion. And you're welcome to use the back entrance if you wish."  
  
"Thank you, Nicolae," Tatiana said with a smile. Nicolae quickly cleared Irina and Tatiana's dishes and disappeared, and she looked at her stunned family members. "His father and two brothers were KGB agents," she said. "This restaurant is known in the Russian underground as a good place for a meet, because he's very discreet. Doesn't take sides. Sergei and I figured he'd probably realized we were spies—we had quite a few meetings here ourselves—but he's never said anything." She spoke quickly while boxing up her food, then stood.  
  
Irina finished as well, then pulled a cell phone from her bag and handed it to Jack. "Secure, encrypted line," she said. "My number and Sydney's are in there." She kissed him quickly. "Love you." She turned to Sydney. "Goodbye, sweetheart."  
  
"Bye," Tatiana said. Jack and Sydney each said goodbye, then watched as Irina and Tatiana disappeared into the kitchen. 


	38. Chapter 38

Chapter 38  
  
Ten minutes later, Jack and Sydney were just finishing their breakfasts when Ralph Campbell and two men in nondescript business suits with expressionless faces entered the restaurant. Campbell waved off Nicolae when he came to greet them and wandered through the restaurant until he found the Bristows in the back corner. He looked rather disappointed when he saw the two of them. They both looked up at him with confused expressions.  
  
"Developed a sudden interest in Russian food, Agent Bristow?" Campbell asked, apparently speaking to Jack.  
  
"Thought we'd try something different," Jack replied blandly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"  
  
Campbell just shook his head and turned away. He gestured to Nicolae, and one of his assistants went and pulled the man over to the Bristow's table.  
  
"Would you like a table?" Nicolae asked, looking rather confused, but calm.  
  
Campbell gestured to the Bristows. "Did these two come in alone?"  
  
Jack and Sydney held their breaths for a moment, but released silently when Nicolae wrinkled his brow and said, "No, they came in together."  
  
"Was anyone else with them?" Campbell asked, clearly annoyed. "Did they talk to anyone else while they were here?"  
  
"Not that I am aware of. Now, sir, I believe you are making my customers uncomfortable," Nicolae said, his sweeping gesture making it clear that he was talking about the entire restaurant, not just the Bristows. "I can get you a table and you can order, or you can leave."  
  
Campbell snorted in disgust, gestured to his assistants, and walked out.  
  
A nondescript gray sedan pulled into the parking lot of a small city park. Two women stood from a bench, collected their bags, and got in the back seat.  
  
"Madame, is everything all right? Do I need to hurry?" Paul asked in French as he pulled out of the parking lot, occasionally glancing furtively at the young woman who sat beside his boss.  
  
"Everything is fine, Paul. Take your time," Irina replied in the same language. "This is Tatiana. She'll be working with me," she continued.  
  
"Pleased to meet you," Tatiana said in perfect French.  
  
"The pleasure is mine...Mademoiselle?" Paul tried not to show his confusion. Irina had asked for pickup a day early, then called him fifteen minutes ago to change the location, and yet she said there was no trouble. And this was not standard procedure with regard to either a new business partner or a new employee—he wasn't quite sure which this Tatiana was yet.  
  
"Yes," Tatiana said in answer to his question.  
  
"Where to, Madame?" Paul then asked blandly. Irina was the boss; if she chose to break with procedure, it certainly wasn't his place to question.  
  
"The airport, and then home." Now Paul was even more confused. Irina never allowed anyone but her siblings, him, and the employees assigned to her plane anywhere near it; the chance of someone planting a tracking device that would allow them to trace her movements far too easily was too great. And she certainly didn't take anyone "home" to her compound outside St. Petersburg. He wondered once again who exactly Tatiana was.  
  
Irina and Tatiana began to speak in Russian, and Paul sighed inwardly. He didn't speak Russian, a fact she'd known quite well when she'd hired him. She said that she trusted him, but she needed a bodyguard who didn't speak Russian and so would be acceptable to her business associates. He didn't believe her; Irina Derevko didn't fully trust anyone. Which begged the question of who, exactly, Tatiana was, and how she had managed to gain so much of Irina's trust so quickly. He would watch this one closely, he decided, to make sure Irina's trust wasn't misplaced. That was his job as her bodyguard, after all. 


End file.
